Therapeutic interventions in the treatment of eating disorders. A naturalistic study

This study used naturalistic data from psychodynamic (PD) and cognitive-behavioral (CB) clinicians in the community to offer a portrait of treatments for eating disorder (ED) patients as provided in everyday clinical practice. The research aims were (1) to examine the therapeutic interventions reported by PD and CB clinicians working with ED patients; and (2) to assess the impact of different variables (such as patient personality styles, ED symptomatology, and therapists' theoretical orientation and experience) on the technique use reported by clinicians. A national sample of PD and CB clinicians (N = 105) completed the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200; Westen & Shedler, 1999a, 1999b) to assess personality disorders of a female patient with EDs in their care, as well as the Comparative Psychotherapy Process Scale-Bulimia Nervosa (CPPS-BN; Thompson-Brenner & Westen, 2005) to describe the characteristic interventions used in their treatments. Results showed that PD clinicians tended to use primarily PD interventions, while CB clinicians employed CB techniques supplementing them with a wider range of PD strategies. However, clinicians from both theoretical orientations used adjunctive treatment techniques for EDs at a similar level. In addition, use of PD interventions was strongly associated with the personality styles of ED patients regardless of therapists' orientation, primarily being used more often when patients exhibited dysregulated and impulsive styles. Conversely, use of CB interventions was primarily related to a clinicians' CB orientation, patients with more explicit symptoms of anorexia nervosa, and negatively related to clinicians' years of experience. The clinical implications of these findings were discussed.