Science of Eating Disorders
cognitive behavioural therapy
Mobile Therapy: Using Text-Messaging to Treat Bulimia Nervosa
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most commonly used approaches to treat bulimia nervosa, but even CBT (or any treatment) doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes, even if CBT is helping, a weekly 50 minute therapy session is just not enough. Moreover, like with many other eating disorder treatments, drop-out and relapse rates are high.
What can be done to help the individuals that don’t benefit (or benefit fully) from CBT, or those that relapse after CBT?
Shapiro and colleagues had the idea that maybe using text-messaging (in conjunction with CBT) would increase self-monitoring and accountability of bulimia nervosa patients.
The rationale is that text-messaging might provide an immediate way of engaging with the therapist. The patients are provided feedback and support immediately, and have the knowledge (or a sense of) being held accountable for their actions (i.e., binges and purges).
It is like a daily check-in. It means you don’t have to remember or wait until your next appointment to talk about how a particular day went, or get feedback on your behaviours. You also don’t have to write lengthy diary entries, you …
A Study Without a Control Group? Evidence for Enhanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Adults with Anorexia Nervosa
Here’s a quick tip: when a study that purports to find evidence of treatment effectiveness–preliminary or not–doesn’t have a control group (a group that doesn’t undergo treatment but is otherwise similar to the group that does), you should raise your eyebrows. Or shake your head. Or roll your eyes. Whichever you prefer.
Why do we need a control group? If the treatment works, we will see improvement in the patients, so isn’t that evidence enough? Well, no.
(By the way, I recommend reading the article I just quoted, ”How to Be a Wise Consumer of Psychological Research” from the American Psychological Association.)
In the introduction, the authors of this study make the case that anorexia nervosa (AN) is difficult to treat and difficult to study (low prevalence, high dropout, necessary long-length of follow-up, etc…) and so if we could have treatment approach that would be successful on an outpatient basis, that would be great.
No argument there. There is a lot of consensus that long-term continuous low-intensity care is crucial for sustained recovery. (A short stay at a hospital …
Doing It Together: Uniting Couples in the Treatment of Eating Disorders
Eating disorders don’t discriminate against gender, age, sexual orientation or race. Veteran men in their 50′s can struggle with eating disorders, as can trans men and women of all ages and backgrounds, and so can congenitally blind (and deaf) individuals.
Besides the barriers that many of these patients face in simply getting diagnosed with an eating disorder, yes, even if they’ve passed that hurdle, many face an even bigger problem: getting appropriate treatment.
Naturally, no one treatment method will work for everyone, especially when the patient population is so diverse. What works for a 13-year-old female may not work for a man in his 40′s or 50′s. Unfortunately, treatment options (at least those that have some empirical evidence) are limited. As I’ve recently blogged, new treatments are being developed and utilized in treating adults and/or patients with with long-standing eating disorders - sub-populations that have largely been ignored for a long-time.
Following this trend of broadening the types of interventions available to treat eating disorder patients is UCAN: Uniting Couples in the treatment of Anorexia Nervosa.…
How Can We Treat Chronic and Severe Anorexia Nervosa? (On the Need for New Approaches)
Treating anorexia nervosa is hard. Treating chronic and severe anorexia nervosa is a lot harder. Although the situation seems to be improving, there are really no evidence-based treatments for anorexia nervosa – particularly for those who have been sick for a long time.
The treatments that many often claim are evidence-based are often only applicable to a select subgroup of ED patients, and even then, the evidence is usually weak. (I’m referring to Maudsley/FBT (family-based therapy) for adolescents with <3 yrs duration of AN and CBT for bulimia nervosa.) But what about those with long-standing anorexia nervosa? In a recent review, Phillipa Hay and colleagues set out to conduct a systematic review of randomized controlled trials of treatment for chronic AN.
Randomized controlled trials or RCTs are at the heart of evidence-based medicine:
Hay et al searched the literature to identify RCTs where, among other criteria, the mean duration of illness was at least three years. They found eleven studies, but they could only confirm that a majority had a mean duration of over 3 years in just four of those …
- The Genetics of Thin-Ideal Internalization
- Transitioning from Adolescent to Adult Eating Disorder Treatment Programs: What Are The Challenges?
- Bingeing and Purging: Keeping the “Positives” and Eliminating The Negatives?
- Dancing Your Way to Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa
- International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections
- Pills for Bites: The Alarming Link between Drug Abuse and Eating Disorders
- Factors Associated with Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa
- Patient Perspectives on Anorexia, Treatment, and Therapeutic Alliance
- Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?
- Nonpurging Bulimia Nervosa: Where Does It Fit?
- Should Insurance Companies Cover Residential Treatment for Eating Disorders?
- Does Too Much Exposure to Thin Models Cause Eating Disorders? Anorexia, Bulimia in Blind Women
- Are All Anorexics Just Afraid Of Being Fat and Can We Blame The Western Media?
- What’s Wrong with How We Talk About Eating Disorders in the Media and in ED Communities – Part 2
- When Clinicians Do More Harm Than Good (Attitudes Toward Patients with Eating Disorders)
- Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?
- The “Double Life” of Bulimia Nervosa: Patients’ Perspectives
- International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections
- How Can We Treat Chronic and Severe Anorexia Nervosa? (On the Need for New Approaches)
- What’s Wrong with How We Talk About Eating Disorders in the Media and in ED Communities – Part 1
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Tetyana
"My understanding, from Becker and Stice’s
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Cathy (UK) I haven't read the original paper, but what I
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Liz Agreed! It sounds like they are missing out on a L
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Andrea Hi Liz, Sorry if I was unclear in the post; in th
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Charlotte I can't articulate how much I can relate to e
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peridot
This article really resonates with me because I ha
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Pre-morbid BMI, weight restoration, and amenorrhoe
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ko I read your comment and can relate to everything y
Science of Eating Disorders by Tetyana Pekar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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