Cognitive-behavioral therapy for eating disorders

	Treatment Overview
	What To Expect After Treatment
	Why It Is Done
	How Well It Works
	Risks
	What To Think About
	References
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Cognitive-behavioral therapy is an active type of counseling. Sessions usually are held once a week for as long as you need to master new skills. Individual sessions last 1 hour, and group sessions may be longer.

During cognitive-behavioral therapy for anorexia, you learn:

• About your illness, its symptoms, and how to predict when symptoms will most likely recur.
• To keep a diary of eating episodes, binge eating, purging, and the events that may have triggered these episodes.
• To eat more regularly, with meals or snacks spaced no more than 3 or 4 hours apart.
• How to change the way you think about your symptoms. This reduces the power the symptoms have over you.
• How to change self-defeating thought patterns into patterns that are more helpful. This improves mood and your sense of mastery over your life. This helps you avoid future episodes.
• Ways to handle daily problems differently.

You can use your cognitive-behavioral skills throughout your life. You may find that additional "tune-up" sessions help you stay on track with your new skills.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is used to treat the mental and emotional elements of an eating disorder. This type of therapy is done to change how you think and feel about food, eating, and body image. It is also done to help correct poor eating habits and prevent relapse.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is considered effective for the treatment of eating disorders.¹ But because eating disorder behaviors can endure for a long period of time, ongoing psychological treatment is usually required for at least a year and may be needed for several years.² Cognitive-behavioral therapy may be more effective in treating bulimia nervosa rather than anorexia nervosa.

There are no known risks associated with cognitive-behavioral therapy.

For cognitive-behavioral therapy to be most effective, be sure to work together with your counselor toward common goals. If you think you are not working well with your counselor, discuss your concerns with him or her or your primary doctor.

If you have a mental health condition along with an eating disorder, your doctor may suggest medicine. Treating a problem such as depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder may help you recover from an eating disorder.

Complete the special treatment information form (PDF)(What is a PDF document?) to help you understand this treatment.

Citations

1. Andersen AE, Yager J (2005). Eating disorders. In BJ Sadock, VA Sadock, eds., Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 8th ed., vol. 1, pp. 2002–2021. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.

2. Steering Committee on Practice Guidelines, American Psychiatric Association (2006). Treating Eating Disorders: A Quick Reference Guide. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.