As millions of Americans with diabetes are making New Year’s resolutions to eat better and exercise, there is one organization focused on an often ignored area of treatment: the emotional and psychological issues surrounding both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
The Behavioral Diabetes Institute (BDI) is the world's first organization dedicated to tackling the unmet psychological needs of people with diabetes. The BDI offers an array of evidence-based clinical programs, all designed to help people overcome the emotional and behavioral obstacles to living well with diabetes. Based in San Diego, the Behavioral Diabetes Institute is committed to helping people master the unique challenges of diabetes, conducting behavioral research in diabetes, and providing health care providers with the specialty behavioral training necessary for managing diabetes effectively.
The Behavioral Diabetes Institute was founded five years ago by William Polonsky, PhD, CDE, an internationally known, Yale-trained clinical psychologist, certified diabetes educator, associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and author of Diabetes Burnout: What To Do When You Can’t Take It Anymore. Formerly the senior psychologist at the famed Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Dr. Polonsky is an active researcher in behavioral diabetes and travels throughout the world speaking to patients and health care professionals about how to understand and address the emotional stresses of living with diabetes.