Emotion-Focused Group Psychotherapy for Bulimia Nervosa

• Author / Creator

  Bartlett, Jennifer

• Bulimia nervosa is a complex disorder characterized by binge-eating, purging, secrecy, and an abundance of painful emotions among the most prevalent of which is shame. Our most popular approaches to treatment have shown only moderate success, thus necessitating the search for alternative treatment options. The purpose of this study was to examine the process of change in eating disorder symptomology and shame in bulimia nervosa using emotion-focused group therapy (EFT-G). Ten participants from two trials of group psychotherapy were repeatedly evaluated on outcome measures for bulimia symptomology, internal shame, and external shame prior to, during and following treatment using a single subject withdrawal design (A-B-A), supplemented by ratings and written formal feedback describing helpful aspects of therapy. Repeated measures data were analyzed via visual inspection for changes in level, trend, variability, immediacy, and overlap from baseline to treatment, and from baseline to follow-up, to examine change in outcome variables for each participant. Participants were also measured on outcomes for low self-esteem, interpersonal alienation, depression, and emotion dysregulation in a pretest-posttest format, which was analyzed by examining participants’ change scores to determine whether a clinically significant change had occurred, based on existing literature. Findings demonstrated a clinically significant improvement for the majority of participants on measures of bulimia symptomology and half of participants on internal shame, with a minority of participants improving on external shame during treatment and/or follow-up. Half of participants also exhibited a clinically significant improvement on a measure of depression symptomology, with a minority of participants improving on interpersonal alienation, low self-esteem, and emotion dysregulation post-treatment. These findings suggest that EFT-G shows great promise and may be a viable treatment alternative for bulimia nervosa.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Group Therapy
  • Emotion-Focused Therapy
  • Bulimia Nervosa
  • Eating Disorders

• Graduation date

  Spring 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-7m82-7h38

• License

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