Prof.dr Sandra Mulkens is a professor of clinical psychology at the faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (0.4 Fte) of Maastricht University, where she holds the endowed chair "Feeding and Eating disorders". In this appointment, she is affiliated with SeysCentra, a last resort center for children with feeding and eating problems, where she holds the position of "Head Research and Development". Moreover, she is a licensed clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and cognitive-behavioural therapist, and supervisor
She is also appointed at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (0.6 Fte), where she teaches about psychopathology, including body image problems, the intake process, and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Furthermore, she conducts research on eating disorders, body image, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), cosmetic surgery, and CBT. She also treats patients suffering from eating disorders and body image problems, including BDD.
Her research aims at investigating maintaining factors and (CBT) treatment options for obese individuals, individuals with eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Furthermore, she investigated the relationship between psychopathology and the desire for and outcome of cosmetic surgery, collaborating with several plastic surgical centers.
She is a member of the editorial board of the Dutch journal for Behaviour Therapy, a board member of the Dutch Academy of eating Disorders (NAE), member of the scientific conference committee of the annual conference of the Dutch Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (VGCt®), and board member of the SIG Eating disorders and Obesity (VGCt®). She was also involved in the workgroup that rewrote the Dutch guidelines for eating disorders (Zorgstandaard Eetstoornissen, 2017).
PRE-CONGRESS WORKSHOP on 05.09.2018, 09:00-17:00:
New interventions for eating and weight disorders: exposure 2.0
CBT is the gold standard for eating disorders. Surprisingly, well-known CBT protocols do not include much exposure while exposure is a very effective intervention to reduce eating disorder symptoms. In this workshop we will demonstrate new exposure techniques for all eating and weight disorders. These new exposures have a strong cognitive component; during the exposure expectancies are explicitly violated. For example, a patient might expect to gain 5 kilos after eating 100 grams of chocolate. Or a patient is convinced that she has to eat the whole bag of cookies after eating one. Another patient is afraid of eating a ‘normal’ meal because eating a ‘normal’ meal means a binge. Another one avoids wearing nice tight clothing because then everybody will see how fat and ugly she is. Such expectations are violated through good exposures. A variety of exposures (e.g., cue/craving exposure, body exposure, forbidden food exposure, eating exposure) can be used to violate diverse typical eating disorder related beliefs and expectancies. The exposures will be explained, demonstrated, discussed and practiced.
Learning goal: Being able to design, set up and work through a good exposure session to explicitly violate all types of eating disorder related beliefs and expectancies.