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Atypical Anorexia in LGBTQ Clients: Moving from Communities That Harm to Communities That Heal

December 12, 2024 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am PST

This presentation addresses some of the clinical challenges that arise when treating LGBTQ patients with atypical anorexia. Integrating findings from a longitudinal study of individuals with atypical anorexia, this presentation uses patient art and quotes to describe queer patients experiences with their illness, treatment, and recovery. First, we will discuss how societal pressures to conform to beauty and gender ideals contribute to the development and maintenance of eating disorders, with attention to societal discrimination, gender norms, body surveillance, and weight requirements for gender affirmation surgery. Next, we will discuss how eating disorders emerge within some LGBTQ people as attempts to cope with the co-occurring experiences of weight dissatisfaction and gender dysphoria and/or homophobia. Following, we will discuss how many LGBTQ patients experienced healing as a process of connection, including connecting with queer community and affirming relationships, connecting with trans/nonbinary identities, connecting with their bodies, and connecting with ideologies of resistance. This presentation will end with a discussion of how we can make treatment environments more affirming and healing for LGBTQ clients.

Learning Objectives:

Following this presentation, participants will be able to:
  1. Describe how co-occurring pressures of weight dissatisfaction, homophobia, gender norms, and gender dysphoria maintain eating disorder symptoms for LGBTQ patients.
  2. Explain one benefit of integrating discussion of gender identity into eating disorder treatment for all patients.
  3. List three recommendations for making eating disorder treatment settings more inclusive for LGBTQ patients.

Erin Harrop, PhD, LICSW, MSW (they/them) Bio:

Erin N. Harrop, LICSW, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work and a licensed medical social worker. Their research centers on the intersection of weight stigma, eating disorders, and patient healthcare experiences. They approach their work from a patient-centered, lived-experience, intersectional social-justice-informed, fat liberation lens. Erin’s clinical work involves group work to support patients in deconstructing diet culture and engrained weight stigma. They also conduct trainings at the provider level, introducing interprofessional clinicians to weight-inclusive practices that honor patients’ unique intersecting identities.

Details

Date:
December 12, 2024
Time:
10:00 am - 11:00 am PST
Event Category: