Big Ideas In Eating Disorders

About Big Ideas In Eating Disorders

In this series “Big Ideas In Eating Disorders”, join host Kathy Pike (clinical psychologist and professor at Columbia University) as we hear from the pioneers in the field of eating disorders who were part of building the modern foundation of the field. Each guest shares their personal and professional journeys and their one big idea that they have come to appreciate as central to eating disorders.

Publisher

bigideasineatingdisorders

Category

health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 Feb 2023

Latest episode

20 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

40 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Season 2: Episode 8 - They’re Called Eating Disorders for a Reason: The Study of Eating Behavior is Key to Advance Science and Care with B. Timothy Walsh, MD

   B. Timothy Walsh, MD, FAED, is the William and Joy Ruane Professor of Pediatric Psychopharmacology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, where he founded the eating disorders research program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. A pioneer in the field, Dr. Walsh has served as president of both the Academy for Eating Disorders and the Eating Disorders Research Society, and he chaired the Eating Disorders Work Group for both DSM-IV and DSM-5. His work has been recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, the Academy for Eating Disorders, the National Eating Disorders Association, and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. In this episode, Dr. Walsh shares a big idea that is also a simple one. Eating disorders are defined by disturbances in eating and eating-related behavior, so progress depends on studying those behaviors directly and objectively. That is how we will build more effective prevention and treatment. Dr. Walsh takes us behind the scenes of this research and explains how a clearer picture of the biology behind these behaviors, across eating disorders, will transform the way we approach them.

2. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Season 2: Episode 7 – Shaped by Society: Beyond a Culturalist Understanding of Eating Disorder Risk with Anne Becker

   Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD, SM, is Dean for Clinical and Academic Affairs, Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is founding and past Director of the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. A medical anthropologist and psychiatrist, she studies the social and cultural mediation of body image and eating disorder risk, social barriers to care for mental disorders, and school-based mental health promotion. Her landmark research on the impact of rapid social transition and media exposure on eating pathology in Fiji reshaped how the field understands the social roots of these illnesses, and her leadership has been recognized with the Price Family Award for Research Excellence from the National Eating Disorders Association and the Leadership Award in Research from the Academy for Eating Disorders, of which she is a past president. Professor Becker joins us for this fifth episode in our Big Ideas in Eating Disorders series featuring contributing authors to the book that Dr. Ruth Weissman and I co-edited. In Chapter 5 of Weissman and Pike's Big Ideas in Eating Disorders, Becker takes on one of the field's most durable shorthand explanations: that "culture" causes eating disorders. For decades, cultural explanations have been invoked broadly and often imprecisely, flattening the complex social worlds in which people live into a single variable. Becker argues that this culturalist framing has outlived its usefulness, and that the field needs a more refined understanding of culture that carefully examines how social environments, structures, and inequities actually shape who becomes ill, who is recognized as having an eating disorder, and who receives care. That reframing has real consequences. Drawing on decades of research, including her pioneering fieldwork in Fiji, Becker traces how social forces operate on eating disorder risk in ways that are more specific, more measurable, and more actionable than "culture" at a high level can capture, and she makes the case for what a socially informed science of eating disorders would make possible for prevention, identification, and treatment around the world. Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation with Anne as she unpacks her chapter, the science and fieldwork behind it, and what it means to take society seriously in understanding eating disorders.

3. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Season 2: Episode 6 - Reframing 'Self-Control Failures' in Eating Disorders: A Focus on Value-Based Decisions about Control with Laura Berner, PhD

   Laura Berner, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she directs the Center for Computational Psychiatry and the Neuroscience of Eating and Associated Pathology Research Program. She is also a principal investigator at the Center of Excellence in Eating and Weight Disorders. Dr. Berner earned her bachelor’s in psychology from Princeton University and her PhD in clinical psychology from Drexel University. In this episode, Dr. Berner expands on the big idea she and co-author Riley Macks put forward in their chapter of Big Ideas in Eating Disorders, which I co-edited with Dr. Ruth Weissman. Her early work with rodents in Dr. Bart Hoebel’s lab raised the question that still drives her: what is the loss of control at the heart of binge eating, and how can understanding it lead to better treatment? Today her lab measures that loss of control using models of how people weigh costs and benefits. What calculations do people make before a binge, and how do those calculations shape whether they can resist? Dr. Berner makes the case that understanding this process could transform our ability to deliver more precise and effective care.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings