EveryBody Eats! Responding to Food and Body-Image Concerns (MMD)

Learning Objectives

1. Identify core patterns of disordered eating and body-image distress (e.g., restriction, binge eating, purging, compulsive exercise) as they present across general mental health populations, including clients without a formal eating disorder diagnosis.
2. Describe a weight-neutral, trauma-informed framework for understanding eating-related behaviors as adaptive responses to stress, neurobiological vulnerability, trauma exposure, and environmental context rather than as weight-driven choices.
3. Apply developmentally appropriate, non-stigmatizing assessment strategies to screen for food access concerns, body distress, and eating-related risk factors in routine mental health practice.
4. Differentiate how eating and body-image concerns commonly intersect with co-occurring conditions such as trauma-related disorders, neurodivergence, diabetes, food insecurity, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, substance use, gender dysphoria, chronic illness, and self-harm.
5. Demonstrate clinical responses to eating-related distress that reduce shame, minimize power struggles, and support nervous system regulation without reinforcing weight stigma or food moralization.
6. Evaluate personal and professional beliefs related to weight, health, food, and movement and explain how these beliefs may influence clinical language, assessment, and treatment recommendations.
7. Implement at least one practice change that promotes safety, autonomy, and inclusivity for clients experiencing eating- or body-image-related concerns within non-specialty mental health settings.