Open Sky to Present Lecture on Disordered Eating at NATSAP Annual Conference

Open Sky Wilderness Therapy’s Emily Demong, LCSW and Heather Menzie, MA, LPC-I will present a lecture entitled “The Comprehensive Treatment of Disordered Eating: How to be Effective in Therapeutic Programs” at the annual conference of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP) in La Jolla, California. 

The lecture will be an interactive, educational and experiential program targeted to mental health professionals that work in clinical settings similar to Open Sky. The purpose of the presentation will be about how a comprehensive approach to disordered eating similar to what Open Sky employs can be highly effective.

“Body image issues, poor relationship to food, and unbalanced nutrition are impacting our students more frequently than ever. We have seen an increase in this trend with both our male and female populations. Our students are bombarded with negative marketing and media influences all the time and I feel we have an obligation to help them reconnect with a deeper sense of themselves. At Open Sky, we have found that education around how food choices influence their physiological and mental functioning can be a springboard to deeper discussions regarding the importance of self care,” says Emily Demong, Open Sky’s Clinical Director.

The lecture will discuss the latest research findings for treating disordered eating along with Open Sky’s experience successfully treating it in a holistic wilderness therapy setting. The lecture will begin by reviewing the myriad of ways that disordered eating can manifest clinically. With this foundation, the lecture will then focus on how to identify emerging disordered eating patterns and discuss the clinical interventions that are most effective for the varying populations that suffer from it.

Heather, an adolescent therapist at Open Sky hopes the lecture will be informative and will also have immediate practical application for the professionals in attendance. “We hope they will leave the session with a concrete understanding of what disordered eating is and how to best treat disordered eating through the use of comprehensive clinical interventions in both wilderness and residential settings.”

Emily Demong is a licensed clinical social worker and serves as Open Sky’s Clinical Director. In addition to disordered eating, Emily’s areas of clinical expertise include depression, anxiety, grief and loss, trauma, self-harm, and adoption and attachment issues.

Her clinical approach is informed by cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, family systems, and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) theories. Heather Menzie is a master’s level therapist who serves as an adolescent therapist working with both boys and girls.

Heather supports her students in healing from past traumas, anxiety, and depression through mind/body-based practices and experiential therapy. Heather encourages her students to empower themselves through learning and practicing stress management skills and assertive communication tools.

Open Sky’s holistic wilderness therapy program is the most comprehensive and clinically sophisticated wilderness therapy program in the industry, and the only one that is supported by continuous outcome-based research. Open Sky sets the standard in the industry and employs the widest range of empirically supported interventions for young adults and adolescents in crisis. For more information, please visit www.openskywilderness.com