Is your eating disorder therapy based on the latest scientific evidence?

Beginning psychotherapy is a difficult and important step for many people suffering from bulimia and binge eating. It’s often assumed that therapists will use the best available techniques to treat eating disorder symptoms. However, a study released online this month shows this is not the case - many therapists fail to practice types of therapy that have been demonstrated, in numerous scientific studies, to help people with eating disorders.

When a type of therapy has been shown to treat people in many research studies, it’s known as an “empirically supported treatment.” For bulimia and binge eating, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is the most heavily researched of the empirically supported treatments.

So how often do therapists actually use CBT when treating bulimia and binge eating? Researchers sought to answer this question by surveying about 400 therapists who treat eating disorders. Among the therapists surveyed, 95% identified CBT as an empirically supported treatment for bulimia and 80% identified it as such for binge eating disorder.

However, most therapists did not rely exclusively on CBT or other empirically supported treatments. Instead, many reported using techniques from a variety of forms of psychotherapy, including ones without any empirical support. And 12% reported using only types of therapy that have no empirical support when treating people with bulimia and binge eating.

The researchers conclude that it’s important to raise awareness and therapist training of empirically supported treatments. While this will definitely be helpful, it’s difficult to expect therapists to deliver therapy exactly as it’s done in research studies. Practically speaking, there are many differences between how therapy is applied in research settings versus everyday, real-world therapy settings. For example, there is often more variation in types of symptoms that people are struggling with when they seek private therapy compared to the strict requirements of specific symptoms in research studies. 

Given all the research that has been done to design helpful treatments for bulimia and binge eating, consider the role this should play in your own therapy. 

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Dr. Gupta is a professor at Barnard College of Columbia University and provides individual therapy at Tribeca Psychology

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