Clinical · Diagnostic · Evidence-BasedIntegrated Treatment, LLC
Here, Tara Deliberto, PhD provides evidence-based care to patients with diagnosable conditions — including eating disorders, anxiety, and OCD. She also leads treatment innovation in the space of body image and eating, offers case consultation to fellow professionals, teaches continuing education courses, and provides AI mental health support consultation.
The approach is manualized and precise: clear, replicable protocols rather than improvised technique, built from years of clinical training and research at some of the field's leading institutions.
Tara Deliberto, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist, treatment innovator, and author. She trained at Hofstra University, Harvard University, and the medical college of Cornell University, and served on faculty there. She founded and directed the Eating Disorders Partial Hospitalization Program (ED PHP) at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital — a top-rated psychiatric hospital — and was Senior Lab Manager at Harvard University's Laboratory for Clinical and Developmental Research. Her career: the evidence-based treatment of diagnosable conditions — such as eating disorders and emotion dysregulation.
View Tara's full CV for a complete record of training, positions, and publications, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
What she's built
- Clinician training and free eating disorder and body image resources: IMT-ED.com
- Creator of Integrative Modalities Therapy (IMT), published by New Harbinger (2019) and endorsed by faculty at Yale and UCSF
- Founder & Past Director, the Eating Disorders Partial Hospitalization Program (ED PHP), NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
- Former Senior Lab Manager, Laboratory for Clinical and Developmental Research, Harvard University
Treating Eating Disorders in Adolescents: Evidence-Based Interventions for Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating
2019Client Resources for Treating Eating Disorders in Adolescents: Evidence-Based Interventions for Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating
Spanish EditionTratamiento de los Trastornos Alimentarios en Adolescentes: Intervenciones Basadas en la Evidencia para la Anorexia, la Bulimia y el Trastorno por Atracón
"It isn't often that I see a resource as thorough, spot-on, and hopeful as the Integrative Modalities Therapy (IMT) books. Without a doubt, this is what my family and I needed when I was struggling at a young age. I highly recommend IMT and will continue to do so for years to come!"
"I am impressed at the lengths the authors went to in soliciting input from parents who successfully helped their child with an eating disorder to recover. They have synthesized components from several evidence-based treatment models into a manualized approach, presenting information in an accessible manner that prioritizes practical solutions to improve the clinical-caregiver feedback and direction loop to provide the best chance for full recovery to patients/clients. IMT is a promising and accessible format enabling a wide variety of clinicians to deliver state-of-the-art understanding and resources to families impacted by the devastation of an eating disorder diagnosis."
"A truly comprehensive guide in the treatment of eating disorders during adolescence—their most common period of onset. Deliberto and Hirsch seamlessly integrate the core components from several treatment modalities into one extensive manual, and with their own pearls of clinical wisdom interspersed throughout, this is a must-read for anyone involved in the treatment of eating disorders."
"This book is a godsend for clinicians working in the trenches with people who have eating disorders. This work offers a clear, comprehensive, step-by-step guide to help clients and caregivers effectively fight back against eating disorders. The main modality used by the authors is IMT, which offers a welcomed integration of evidence-based individual, group, and family therapies into the treatment of eating disorders."
"This book is an invaluable resource for clinicians treating adolescent eating disorders. Not only have two expert clinicians described their experience with interventions, they have pulled together materials and resources that will help engage patients in the therapy process. Adolescent eating disorders can be difficult to treat—this book is like having an expert clinical supervisor always available to answer the inevitable, 'what do I do next?'"
"At last! A practical, systematic, and evidence-based approach that breaks down the complexities of treating a complex mental illness, and turns confusion into confidence for clinicians, parents, and patients. By systematically engaging carers, this method also educates and incites the adolescent to fight against their own eating disorder."
While on faculty at the medical college of Cornell University, Tara created a novel approach to treating eating disorders — one that turns a notoriously complex illness into something clinicians can actually deliver, with hundreds of pages of treatment material available free to anyone. It was published by New Harbinger in 2019, just before the pandemic, and later translated into Spanish by Psara Ediciones in Madrid.
IMT (Integrative Modalities Therapy) is a manualized treatment for adolescent eating disorders, built to be delivered reliably by clinicians who aren't specialists in the field. Rather than requiring years of niche training, it integrates evidence-based techniques into a structured, step-by-step protocol — giving general clinicians a clear, replicable path to delivering care that would otherwise require a specialist. That's the core problem it solves: eating disorder treatment is notoriously hard to access, and IMT was built to close that gap.
Talking eating disorders & body image
Why IMT exists
Eating disorders are deadly, and effective treatment is scattered across academic papers, conference talks, and unpublished manuals. IMT curates that evidence base into one integrated, standardized package — designed to be scalable, adaptable, and usable by clinicians who aren't specialists — so care can reach more people, more reliably.
- For patients — handouts written to be readable and developmentally appropriate for adolescents, with concrete techniques that work even when eating disorders make focus and cognition difficult.
- For families — clear, structured guidance carers can reference between sessions, so they can implement life-saving treatment at home without relying on memory of what a clinician said.
- For clinicians — evidence-based treatment in a box: a structured protocol that lets general clinicians deliver care that would otherwise require years of specialist training, and that travels with the patient across levels of care.
Outside research using her material
A team at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital independently studied RAPP, a supplemental 8-week virtual group therapy program for adolescents discharged from inpatient eating disorder treatment. RAPP runs three weekly groups — nutrition, CBT, and ACT — and its CBT group curriculum is based on Tara's book, Treating Eating Disorders in Adolescents (New Harbinger, 2019). Neither Tara nor Integrated Treatment was involved in the study.
Published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders (2025), the study found:
- 80% average weekly attendance, 4.2 out of 5 patient satisfaction
- Higher attendance linked to lower anxiety (p=.01) and fewer eating disorder symptoms (p<.001)
- Female completers saw a lower 6-month readmission rate than the historical comparison group (p=.03)
The Compassionate Bet
In her white paper, The Compassionate Bet: A New Paradigm for Ethically Scaling AI-Powered Mental Health Support, Tara lays out her thesis: AI can help close the global mental health treatment gap, but only on a compassionate bet, choosing user trust over engagement metrics. Four commitments anchor it: clinician-shaped design over simulated relationships, fidelity to evidence-based science, radical transparency about the technology's limits, and hospital-grade data privacy.
Her work in AITara is a Co-founder of Yuna.io, a high-quality, low-cost, scalable mental health solution. She has been part of the company from its earliest days, shaping its clinical direction as it grew.
- Built the clinical guardrails that keep the AI safe
- Wrote the evidence-based skills the AI teaches
- Contributes to outcome research measuring real impact
- Shapes clinically-informed product decisions and business strategy
Peer-reviewed work
Tara's research has been published and cited across the clinical literature on eating disorders, self-injury, and suicidal behavior — including foundational work on implicit cognition and suicidal behavior with Matthew Nock, PhD, a MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient and longtime Harvard faculty member, now the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology there. Her full publication history and citation record are available on Google Scholar.
Bringing IMT to clinicians
Beyond her own practice, Tara offers consultation to clinicians and organizations implementing Integrative Modalities Therapy, and teaches IMT through Continuing Education (CE) courses for practicing clinicians.
- Individual and group consultation for clinicians implementing IMT
- Continuing Education (CE) courses on IMT for practicing clinicians, including an on-demand eating disorders course at CoreWellness
- On-site trainings, including a multi-day intensive training for clinicians in Alaska and a training on an indigenous reservation, bringing evidence-based eating disorder treatment to communities with limited access to specialized care
- Eating Disorders
- Body Image
- Family
- Women's Issues
- Divorce
- Parenting
- Stress Management
- Ego work, meditation instruction, or spiritual frameworks
- Anything positioned as consciousness expansion or transcendence
- Crossover with Tara's non-clinical work, students, or content
Book an appointment
Reach Tara through her Psychology Today profile — email is preferred over calling, and she'll follow up from there.