Expert Advisory Council

Beth Hartman McGilley, PhD, FAED, CEDS, Associate Professor, University of Kansas School of Medicine–Wichita is a psychologist in private practice, specializing in the treatment of eating and related disorders, body image, athletes, trauma, and grief. A Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, and a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist, she has practiced for 30 years, writing, lecturing, supervising, directing an inpatient eating disorders program and providing individual, family and group therapy. Dr. McGilley is co-editor of the 2010 book: Treatment of Eating Disorders: Bridging the Research-Practice Gap with Dr.’s Margo Maine and Doug Bunnell. She has published in academic journals and the popular media, as well as contributing chapters to several books. She is an editor for Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, and is working on her second book, a tribute to the patient’s she’s served over the course of her career. Her hobbies include competitive cycling, hiking, and writing.

• “As a member of the Monte Nido Advisory Board, I am pleased to join a distinguished group of professionals dedicated to the prevention and treatment of eating disorders. In this capacity, and consistent with Monte Nido’s on-going efforts to provide state of the art treatments, I will assist the board in the mission of ensuring that Monte Nido’s sites and staff continue to operate with innovative, effective and compassionate care. As a clinician in private practice, and former director of an inpatient eating disorders program, this is a welcomed opportunity to once again interact with a multidisciplinary treatment staff, as well as collaborate with esteemed colleagues in the teaching of best practices with a treatment program long recognized for their clinical excellence.”

Michael P. Levine, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he taught 33 years. In the field of eating disorders his commitment to research, writing, and activism focuses on the intersection between sociocultural risk factors, prevention, community psychology, and developmental psychology. He has authored two books and three prevention curriculum guides, and he has co-edited three books on prevention. In addition, he has authored or co-authored approximately 100 articles and book chapters, and he has presented his work throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Spain, Austria, and Australia. Dr. Levine is a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED), which has awarded him their Meehan-Hartley Award for Leadership in Public Awareness and Advocacy (2006), and their Research-Practice Partnership Award (2008). Dr. Levine is also a member of the Founders Council of the National Eating Disorders Association, which awarded him the Lori Irving Award for Excellence in Eating Disorders Prevention and Awareness (2004) and the Nielsen Award for Lifetime Achievement (2013). He is currently co-editing, with his long-time collaborator and colleague Dr. Linda Smolak, a two-volume Handbook of Eating Disorders for Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. He lives in Mt. Vernon, OH, with his wife, Dr. Mary A. Suydam, a Kenyon religious studies and women and gender studies professor.

• “I have an abiding commitment to Carolyn, Bruce, and their work in and through Monte Nido. Thus, I was honored to be invited to join the Monte Nido Advisory Board. For over 15 years I have never hesitated to refer sufferers and their families to Monte Nido for evaluation and treatment; similarly, I have been quick to refer professionals at all levels of experience to Carolyn for support, advice, and training. The reason for my deep confidence is that Monte Nido, as a set of programs, applies and extends what Carolyn embodies: compassion, patience, hope, and an unshakeable insistence on what I have experienced as two principles. The first is that health and recovery are not just possible, they are more fundamental than illness and despair. The second is that treatment must be evidence-based—and that evidence must be found and integrated from a wide variety of sources, including scientific research, clinical experience, and the wisdom of intelligent, creative, soul-full people in other cultures and throughout history.”

Jennifer L. Gaudiani, MD, CEDS is the founder and Medical Director of the Gaudiani Clinic. Board Certified in internal medicine, she completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard, medical school at Boston University School of Medicine, and her internal medicine residency and chief residency at Yale, where she won numerous clinical awards. Dr. Gaudiani became a leader at the ACUTE Center for Eating Disorders at Denver Health in its current form in 2008, as the nation’s top medical stabilization center for adults with eating disorders too medically compromised to receive care in a mental health setting. After seven great years there, she left as its Medical Director to pursue her vision of outpatient care, founding the Gaudiani Clinic. During her years at ACUTE, Dr. Gaudiani became a nationally recognized internees for her work on the medical complications of eating disorders.

She has lectured nationally and internationally, is widely published in the scientific literature as well as on blogs, is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Eating Disorders, and sits on the board of IAEDP (International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals) as the only internist. Dr. Gaudiani is one of the only outpatient internists in the US who carries the Certified Eating Disorder Specialist designation. She feels fortunate to sit on the Monte Nido Advisory Board as well as the teach and consult nationally.

• “I have had the pleasure to work with the remarkable Monte Nido & Affiliates staff and all of their residential programs for the last eight years. I have long regarded Monte Nido & Affiliates as representing the best that small residential programming can offer. The staff are simply remarkable: for years, my patients have raved about the authentic, warm, real relationships they develop with staff, from nurses to therapists to dietitians. The clinical theory and vision that underlies care at Monte Nido & Affiliates programs is absolutely right: compassionate, consistent, rigorous, respectful, caring, and dedicated to seeing the patient as a complete person while not letting the eating disorder get the upper hand. For years, clients of mine who went to Monte Nido & Affiliates have described how this was the program that let them finally get better. The small, cozy environment and homelike setting lend themselves so well to the type of healing, insight, changes, and development of self-care skills needed by patients with eating disorders. I recommend Monte Nido & Affiliates programs with the highest possible degree of confidence.”

Michael A. Strober, PhD is the Franklin Mint Professor of Eating Disorders and Psychiatry at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, and director of the Eating Disorders Program at the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA. After graduating magna cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York, he attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he received a doctorate in clinical psychology with high honors in 1975. Dr. Strober joined the faculty of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in 1975, and has served as director of the Eating Disorders Program for the past 30 years. Today, the UCLA Eating Disorders Program is recognized internationally as a center of excellence for the care it provides to children, teenagers and adults. In addition to his extensive clinical expertise in the area of consultation and treatment, Dr. Strober has authored nearly 200 scientific articles and book chapters. Dr. Strober is a founding member and past president of the Eating Disorders Research Society, a founding fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, has served as advisor and consultant to the National Institute of Mental Health on research priorities in eating disorders, and is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Clinical Consultant

Timothy D. Brewerton, MD is triple board certified in general psychiatry, child/adolescent psychiatry and forensic psychiatry, Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Founding Fellow of the Academy of Eating Disorders. He is a Past-President of the Eating Disorders Research Society and the South Carolina Psychiatric Association. Dr. Brewerton has published over 125 articles and book chapters on various topics in psychiatry, including eating and related disorders, psychopharmacology, neurobiology, PTSD, dissociation and the effects of childhood sexual and physical abuse. He edited the “Clinical Handbook for Eating Disorders: An Integrated Approach” and co-edited (with Amy Baker Dennis) “Eating Disorders, Substance Use Disorders and Addictions: Research, Clinical and Treatment Aspects,” which is in press. Dr. Brewerton has reviewed for over 36 journals, including the Journal of Traumatic Stress, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Eating Disorders, Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, and Current Food and Nutrition Science. He has received numerous awards recognizing his accomplishments, including the 2013 Craig Johnson Award for Clinical Practice and Training by the National Eating Disorders Association, the Honorary Certified Eating Disorder Specialist award by the International Association of Eating Disorder Specialists, Best Doctors in America, America’s Top Psychiatrists, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and numerous teaching awards.

• “I have known Carolyn Costin for over 20 years and share her vision to bring excellence in care to women with eating disorders. I am honored to be asked to advise her and the staff of Monte Nido in this worthy endeavor.”