Eliminating Self Thoughts – A Key to Overcoming Eating Disorder
Rather than focusing on their eating behaviours or weight issues, a better way for people with eating disorder to overcome their condition is to help them ward off negative thoughts about themselves – new research reveals.
Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry (IOP) at King’s College London and the University of Oxford used a computer-based treatment known as “Cognitive Bias Modification” (CBM) to treat 88 female participants at risk of eating disorder. Such treatment was designed to teach participants how to change their perspective of what happens in life and the reasons behind things. It has already been used as a treatment for some anxiety disorders and is currently being developed for use as a treatment for depression. This study is the first to use CBM to target eating disorders.
According to the researchers, it is common for sufferers to focus on eating, weight, and shape rather than on beliefs about oneself. So in the study, instead of focusing on these areas, the researchers focused on helping sufferers eliminate negative self-beliefs and then investigated whether changing those beliefs would bring about a change in symptoms. CBM was the ideal treatment strategy for the research because it allows experimental manipulation of beliefs.
During the experiment, participants would read scenarios on a computer screen. They were asked to complete missing words and answer questions about each scenario in a way that encouraged more adaptive beliefs about themselves. Just after the first session, the women experienced a range of effects, including significant changes in target beliefs, eating disorder behaviours, related intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and depression, with some of the effects remaining at a one-week follow-up.
“We found CBM changed the participants’ negative beliefs which in turn changed their behaviours and thoughts related to eating, weight, and shape. Completing this training changed how the women thought and felt when they saw themselves in a mirror, weighed themselves and it changed how much they ate,” said lead author Jenny Yiend, Ph.D., from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s.
“It is early days, and this is not yet a fully developed therapy, but these results are promising. The next steps are to lengthen the intervention, and study its effects in a clinical population,” said second lead author Myra Cooper, Ph.D., a consultant clinical psychologist from the University of Oxford.
The new findings were published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.
Source of this article:
To Treat Eating Disorders, Work on Negative Ideas About Self
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