Four Therapy Treatments for Eating Disorders

As doctors and mental health professionals better understand eating disorders, more treatment options have become available for treating these sometimes life-threatening conditions. Individuals suffering from anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and binge eating disorders should receive some type of therapy as soon as possible.

Although oral medications and hospitalization are often important components of an individual's treatment plan, some kind of psychotherapy is always necessary to help treat the underlying cause that may have triggered onset of an eating disorder.

1. Psychotherapy: Psychotherapy is the most common form of therapy for individuals who are commencing the most difficult part of their treatment. Treatment of most eating disorders begins by treating the person's malnutrition and helping them establish a steady weight gain plan, if they suffer from anorexia.

Psychotherapy addresses the underlying emotions that may have triggered onset of the eating disorder. Psychotherapy may focus on all aspects of the psychological and emotional health of the eating disorder patient.

2. Psychodynamic therapy: This is a form of psychotherapy that refers to an approach of therapy that seeks to encourage the patient to reveal the underlying feelings that may have triggered their eating disorder. Focus is put on the meaning of those feelings, and understanding why those feelings exist.

The approach of psychodynamic therapy is based on the belief that there is an unconscious mind that operates as a kind of reservoir for feelings. Sometimes, these feelings may be too painful for the patient to deal with at surface level, so they may be suppressed in the unconscious (sometime referred to as the subconscious).

Psychodynamic therapy is useful for patients who have long lived with denial about their condition, or whose experience with an eating disorder is strongly connected to a history of underlying negative emotions, beliefs, and thinking patterns.

3. Cognitive therapy: Cognitive therapy focuses on actively working towards changing though patterns and revising long-standing beliefs that may be enabling an eating disorder. Negative thoughts are replaced with more realistic, positive believes, and there is an attempt to understand what triggers the negative thoughts and attitudes.

Cognitive therapy is considered more of a "hands on" approach that seeks to help patients establish normal eating patterns, caloric intakes, and healthy attitudes toward food and exercise. Cognitive therapy seeks to provide patients with a safe and structured atmosphere in which to address fears, emotions, and negative thinking patterns and beliefs.

4. Family therapy: Family therapy can be an important part of an individual's treatment plan. This type of therapy operates on the principle that eating disorders are family problems, and that individuals need their family's full support in order to reach a full recovery. Also, studies have shown that family members with eating disorders have a strong influence on other family members.

Family therapy seeks to provide a safe and productive environment that allows open discussion regarding any concerns or questions that family members may harbor regarding eating disorders. Family therapy also seeks to establish healthy attitudes toward food and exercise among all family members.