Support Eating Disorder Research
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About Dr. Bray's Research:
- Binge eating disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by discrete rapid consumption of objectively large amounts of food without compensation (purging), associated with loss of control and distress.
- The disorder has high lifetime prevalence rates (5%–31%) and a complicated health sequelae (anxiety, depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes) that significantly impairs quality of life.
- Standard-of-care interventions for binge eating disorder have low treatment rates (38.3%–43.6%), high recurrence rates (49%–64%), high treatment dissatisfaction, and early discontinuation of care. Moreover, studies find that 93.4% – 96.8% of individuals who have binge eating disorder never receive a formal diagnosis (and may not know they have an eating disorder) and 56.4% – 86.8% never receive or pursue standard treatment, due in part to a variety of possible treatment barriers.
- Dr. Bray's Research aims to help raise awareness about adult binge eating disorder while also identifying and testing new treatments that are cost-efficient and easily accessible to those in need.
- Link to Dr. Bray's Publication List HERE.
What Your Contribution Supports:
- Publication Fees
- Travel Expenses to Present at Conferences
- Dedicated Time for Research & Publication
- Media Content to Help Promote Research Dissemination
- Application of Research Findings into General Practice
- Start-Up Funding for a 501(c)(3) Dedicated to this Research
About Dr. Bray:
- Dr. Bray received her Ph.D. in Basic Biomedical Sciences and Neuroscience from the University of South Dakota Graduate School and Sanford School of Medicine (2018). Her dissertation work used a rodent model of amphetamine pre-treatment and withdrawal to identify a neural pathway that enables stress hormones (cortisol in humans, corticosterone in rodents) to alter reward/motivation neurotransmission (e.g., dopamine output in the nucleus accumbens), potentially enabling stress to enhance motivation in healthy conditions and contributing to stress-induced relapse in drug withdrawal (Publications Here ).
- She received her post-doctoral training at the National University of Natural Medicine’s Helfgott Research Institute as an NIH/NCCIH R90 Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Her post-doctoral research focussed on complementary and integrative health interventions that can be used to promote and support recovery from adult binge eating disorder.
- Most notably (and recently), Dr. Bray conducted a cross-sectional mixed-methods study of opinions and experiences of binge eating disorder experts (Publications Here ).
Link to Dr. Bray's Publication List HERE.
Organizer
Brenna Bray
Organizer
Boulder, CO