Food Addiction: A Transdiagnostic Construct of Increasing Clinical Interest and Therapy relevance

Background:

The food addiction (FA) construct has become a topic of increasing interest in the scientific community within the last ten years and has diagnostic, clinical and potential therapeutic implications. Although basic research has shown similar vulnerabilities between food intake and addictive behaviors, there are contradictory results in the literature and a lack of lingitudinal data and neurobionmakers.

Structure and methods:

The issues considered include: state of the art on FA construct, from neurobiological factors to clinical features: b) patients characteristics in different clinical pictures (ED, Obesity, Behavioral addictions) and associated risk factors; c) evaluation procedures; interventions (specific vs. non-specific); future research.

Summary:

In this workshop, the state of the FA field will be discussed, including different clinical populations, from eating disorders (ED) and obesity, to behavioral addictions, and the potential effect of FA in therapy response. The main aim of this workshop is to give also basic clinical guidelines for the assessment and treatment of such patients and video recorded patients will be presented.

Participants will be expected to relate what they learne to their own clinical experience and to take an active role. The workshop should be of interest to all those involved in assessing and treating addictive behaviours, eating disorders (namely binge eating disorders) and patients living with obesity, such as psyhologists, psychiatrits, therapists, dieticians, social workers, counselors and nurses. Bibliography and relevant hand-outs including case study will be given.