DIRECTOR OF DIETARY SERVICES - ADULT ED RTC

Jamie Atkins, RD, CEDRD

Jamie Atkins RD, CEDRD, is the Director of Dietary Services for the Adult RTC at Center for Discovery.  She has a passion for helping people meet their nutritional needs without losing sight of the social and emotional value of food. With a non-judgmental approach, Jamie helps people create a healthy relationship among food, mind, & body.  She believes in helping her clients to find their own path, thus allowing them to take ownership of their recovery, and at times does so utilizing a DBT informed approach she developed for Dietitians.  She has worked in the field for over a decade, and has experience working in all levels of care; hospitalization, residential treatment, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and outpatient.

Jamie is a Licensed Body Positive Facilitator and is an advocate for putting an end to weight stigma while spreading the message of size acceptance through speaking publicly on the topic across the country.  She has also spoken on various other topics related to eating disorders at the national and international level.  She is active in the community, both by raising eating disorder and weight stigma awareness and being on the board of the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (iaedp) serving as the Social Media Chair, and Association of Size Diversity and Health serving as a Member At Large.  Jamie believes the most important step in helping a client on the path to recovery is meeting them where they are, and helping them to build a recovery they can see for themselves, bringing together mind, body, and soul.

PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FACILITY MANAGER

Diandra Medina, M.A., MFT

Diandra has a little over ten years of experience in working with co-occurring disorders. She completed her BA in Psychology at UCSD and MA in Marriage and Family Therapy through Alliant International University. She has remained in the San Diego area since her time in undergraduate school and has various experiences in multiple treatment settings throughout the community. Diandra incorporates a systemic dynamic in her therapeutic work. Throughout her experience, she started to gain a deeper appreciation for the significant role the physical body and awareness of the body plays in an individual’s recovery process.

Following this insight, Diandra completed additional trainings, including 200 hour yoga teacher and Reiki level 2, in order to be able to offer a more holistic approach for her clients. Aside from her work as Program Director for Center for Discovery, she has a private practice in the central San Diego area and is beginning to provide trainings for professionals on how yoga and mindfulness can positively impact the nervous system and overall therapeutic process.

REGISTERED DIETITAN

Ian Cohen, RD

Ian Cohen is a Registered Dietitian that passionately believes in eating disorder recovery as a renewal of emotional, physical and mental health. Ian earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia and completed his Didactic Program in Dietetics at California State University at Northridge, during which he spent three years as a dietetic technician working in eating disorder treatment. He then completed his Dietetic Internship through a dual program at the University of Kentucky and Lexington Veterans Affairs Hospital.

While Ian is devoted to exemplary and empathetic treatment on an individual level at Center for Discovery, he also seeks to apply his principles to a societal platform that will increase body acceptance and deconstruct false narratives about public health. He is currently a member of International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals and International Federation of Eating Disorder Dietitians and engaged on a local level with the San Diego Food Bank, the San Diego Food System Alliance and the San Diego Hunger Coalition.

PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES

Dr. Nicole Posner, MD

Nicole Posner, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Diego specializing in both psychopharmacology and psychotherapy.  Dr. Posner trained in psychiatry at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and has obtained post-graduate training in psychotherapy at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and at Columbia University Psychoanalytic Training and Research.  Identified as an eating disorder expert, she has been featured on national television and served as the president of the San Diego Chapter of the International Eating Disorder Association.

PHYSICIAN

Dr. Martin Schulman, MD

A native of Long Beach, California, Dr. Schulman majored in biochemistry at UC Berkeley in 1981. He graduated from the UC San Diego School of Medicine in 1985 then completed the Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program in Long Beach in 1988. After spending a year working in a small group practice, he joined the clinical faculty at UC San Diego, where he spent the next 15 years splitting his time between administrative, clinical, and teaching duties.

In 2005 Dr. Schulman opened a solo family medicine practice in nearby Encinitas but he maintains his ties to the UC San Diego Medical Center as an affiliate medical staff member and a non-salaried clinical professor of family medicine. Prior to joining Center for Discovery, he spent four years as the medical consultant for a eating disorders residential treatment center for adolescents and adults.

NURSE ADMINISTRATOR

Sydney Harris, RN

Sydney has worked as the Nurse Administrator for Center for Discovery since August 2018 and has over 4.5 years of nursing experience in a variety of settings. Some of her other nursing experience includes caring for active-duty Marines on Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, caring for severely autistic children in an elementary school setting, as well as working with mothers and newborns on the post-partum unit.

Sydney loves the diversity and challenge that the nursing profession brings, and truly enjoys being able to make a difference in her patient’s lives. Working with mental health, she has been able to gain incredible insight and knowledge that helps her to become a better nurse each and every day.