A new Treatment for Eating Disorders on the Rise: CBT-E

admin — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:44:32 +0000

Each year, thousands of young women succumb to the horrors of some form of eating disorder. Many of these stem from a sense of low self esteem or perhaps depression and lead these women into various harmful activities involving food in an effort to lose weight and look their best. Ironically, the result of these activities actually results in the opposite, and the victims of eating disorders often look and feel much worse than they did before they began the harmful pratctices. One of these disorders is called bulimia nervosa and it involves the act of binging on food and then purging it back out so as to not gain weight from it. This can result in a variety of negative health condition for the sufferer including diseases of the esophagus and heart. Because of the severity of the problem and lack of effective treatments, a new treatment has been designed called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-Enhanced or CBT-E.

The practices of traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy have been around for many years. It has been used to treat such sickness as depression, anxiety, addictions, phobias and other issues. It works to uncover thoughts and emotions that are harmful and/or irrational and instead replace them with positive and reinforcing ones. Because of the lack of a really successful track record with issues such as eating disorders, especially bulimia, researchers have recently develop a more extensive program with CBT-E.

CBT-E, developed by Doctor Christopher Fairburn, is a little more in depth of a process than traditional CBT in that is delves deeper into the psychological issues that can surround the patient’s eating disorder versus just the psychology of the patient in general. While the treatment is limited in duration, the exact amount of sessions are to be determined by doctor and patient and can involve both inpatient and outpatient treatments depending on the severity of the condition. In addition, the treatment also has a version that has been developed to treat younger patients (younger than 18). CBT-E has been shown to be effective for both men and women and while length of overall treatment can vary, most patients will finish treatment after 20 weekly sessions have been completed.

While no true “cure” has been developed and proven to work for eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa, because CBT-E works to treat both general psychological issues as well as the specific symptoms of the disorder itself it has shown some interesting promise as of late. The treatment is quite new and is not widely available in clinics as of yet but as testing continues and results are reported, researchers are optimistic that CBT-E may become a widely used treatment in the area of eating disorders such as bulimia in the near future. This is great news for the thousands of suffers who face illness or in extreme cases, death, at the hands of these horrible disorders that literally take control of their lives.

Weight Loss | Fitness | Health » CBT-E

A new Treatment for Eating Disorders on the Rise: CBT-E

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