Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric illness, with a mortality rate that is 5.9 times greater than that of the general population. Family-based treatment (FBT) is emerging as the outpatient treatment of choice for adolescents with AN who are medically stable. The overall perspective of FBT is to utilize parents as a resource in the recovery of adolescent patients with AN. Across randomized control trials, FBT has consistently demonstrated promising rates of weight restoration for adolescents of short illness duration. Although FBT has shown significant success in helping individuals reach weight restoration, psychological concerns of AN, such as weight and shape concern, have been less amenable to change following FBT. Exposure therapy is fundamental for the treatment of core fears in anxiety disorders and it has been proposed that exposure therapy should be extended to AN, however it has yet to be explored in the youth population or in conjunction to FBT. The present study addresses this gap by examining the efficacy of the addition of exposure sessions onto manualized FBT as a mechanism to decrease psychological consequences on AN, such as weight and shape concerns.
Aim 1 is to develop exposure therapy sessions around fear of fatness and integrate them into the manualized FBT treatment protocol.
Aim 2 is to evaluate whether adding exposure sessions around fear of fatness to the manualized FBT protocol decreases weight and shape concerns in youth enrolled in FBT.
Aim 3 is to examine the extent to which the exposure sessions are deemed feasible and acceptable to study participants. I will examine how participants? body image anxiety change before and after each exposure session, as well as how these psychological symptoms change from pre-treatment to post-treatment, as well as at 3-month follow-up. Participants will be recruited from Potomac Behavioral Solutions, an outpatient clinic in Arlington, VA specializing in evidence-based psychological services for eating disorders and anxiety. Results from this project will provide a better understanding of the way in which targeting fear-based symptomatology in AN through the use of exposure sessions impacts weight and shape concerns. Findings will help guide future treatment interventions in order to reduce psychological consequences of AN.
This pilot treatment development study investigates whether integrating exposure sessions that target fear of fatness into the manualized Family-Based Treatment for anorexia nervosa (AN) protocol reduces symptoms of overvaluation of weight and shape among adolescents with AN. Although FBT has shown success in helping adolescents achieve weight restoration, the psychological concerns of AN, such as overvaluation of weight and shape, are less amenable to change. The goal is to learn information that will help us develop new interventions for youth with AN that may both simultaneously involve weight restoration and improvement in body image, thereby minimizing the painful and costly outcomes that AN sufferers currently experience.
