wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Stony Point to host seminar on eating disorders

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Note #7082 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Stony Point to host seminar on eating disorders
7-March-2002
02091

Stony Point to host seminar on eating disorders

May 2-4 event will explore what Bible says about a healthy body image

by John Filiatreau

STONY POINT, N.Y. -A three-day seminar on eating disorders, Imaged in the Eyes of the Creator, is scheduled for May 2-4 at the Stony Point Conference Center in Stony Point, NY.

	The event, co-sponsored by the Office of Health Ministries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the National Network of Presbyterian Women, will examine eating disorders from medical and theological (Reformed) perspectives, discuss treatment resources and feature special worship.

	About 10 million girls and women in the United States, and about one-tenth as many boys and men, are believed to struggle with eating disorders. The best known are anorexia nervosa, in which a person obsessively pursues thinness, sometimes to the point of starvation; and bulimia nervosa, whose victims diet, but intermittently go on eating binges followed by "purging," usually by forced vomiting or abuse of laxatives. About 1,000 people with eating disorders die in the United States each year, nearly all of them female.

 The aim of the Stony Point seminar is to increase participants' awareness of such disorders and to teach them to identify and communicate effectively with people who struggle with them.

	The seminar is intended for campus ministers and chaplains, youth ministers, pastoral counselors, church staff, Christian educators, seminary representatives and parish nurses, as well as families and friends of people with eating disorders.

	Among the questions to be addressed: How do these disorders begin? What are the positive and negative spiritual practices that can reinforce or eliminate them? What does the Bible have to say about a healthy body image? How can the church respond when a member is struggling with an eating disorder?

	The keynote speaker is Katherine A. Halmi, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College and director of its Eating Disorder Treatment Program. Halmi has done research on eating disorders for more than 20 years.

	Other speakers include Mary Louise Bringle, Ph.D., formerly of St. Andrews Presbyterian College, now chair of the humanities division at Brevard College, the author of the book, The God of Thinness: Gluttony and Other Weighty Matters; and Thomas J. Shiltz, a training specialist at Roger Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc, WI, author of Ten Steps for Preventing Student Relapse, Student Guide for Relapse Prevention and Eating Concerns Support Group Curriculum.

	Worship will be led by Dr. Carol Lakey Hess, author of Caretakers of Our Common House: Women's Development in Communities of Faith.
The seminar will also feature small-group sessions and a panel discussion involving a Presbyterian minister and his family, who will share their experience in dealing with eating disorders. The Rev. Mark McDonough, of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee, WI, will be joined by his wife, Maggie, and their 19-year-old daughter, Catherine, a freshman at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.

The cost of registration for the seminar is $185 for students, $250 for others. Registration for May 3 only is $75.
	
For more information, contact the Office of Health Ministries by phone at (888)-728-7228, ext. 5550, or by email at health@ctr.pcusa.org; online registration is available at http://pcusa.org/women/bfrms.html.
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