by Tara Deliberto, Ph.D.
I'm very excited to announce the opening of a new intensive program from adults with eating disorders at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital! This program runs from 8:30am-3:00pm, Monday-Friday, and provides adults with eating disorders the opportunity to eat three times per day with the support of caring and well-trained behavioral specialists. In addition to meal and snack support, patients receive individualized care while having access to a host of groups focusing on goals such as establishing understanding and use of cognitive behavioral therapy skills, mindfulness practice, assertiveness, and the regulation of one’s emotions. Taken together, the services offered to our patients - including meal and snack support, individual therapy, family therapy, and group sessions - foster both mental and physical recovery from disabling and life-threatening eating disorders.
Although our eating disorders partial hospitalization program (ED PHP) is new, New York-Presbyterian Hospital has served the community by treating patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings for many years. Our specialized eating disorders inpatient unit helps people psychologically recover from eating disorders, while benefiting from close medical monitoring of physical symptoms resulting from food restriction & avoidance, purging, laxative use, and other eating disordered behaviors. Additionally, we have outpatient services where people with eating disorders can see licensed mental healthy professionals for 1-2 sessions per week. Until now, however, patients with any form of insurance in the NY-Metro Area have not been afforded the opportunity to have an intermediate level of care in a hospital setting in which support, psychological services, & medical monitoring are provided consistently throughout the week.
In this new eating disorders partial hospitalization program (ED PHP), patients are treated & supported by staff from the disciplines of nursing, social work, psychology, nutrition, & psychiatry, who work together to help people recover both mentally & physically from the effects of the eating disorder. Leadership of this new program will include myself, Tara Deliberto, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Director of the Eating Disorders Center’s Partial Hospitalization Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, as well as Evelyn Attia, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, Director of the Eating Disorders Research Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Director of the Columbia Center for Eating Disorders at Columbia University Medical Center.
For more general information about the Eating Disorders Center: http://www.nyp.org/psychiatry/services/center-for-eating-disorders. More info on the ED PHP will be up soon!