Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, is a type of group therapy that has the potential to assist those suffering from the adverse effects of disordered thinking, including eating disorders. This paper discusses a study conducted to examine whether DBT can possibly be used to treat Binge Eating Disorder in women. The study found that by the end of the treatment, 89% of the experimental group were abstinent in binge-eating behavior at the end of the treatment, while 57% were still abstinent at the 6-month follow-up. This indicates that, although the sample size was small, more research should be done on the impact of DBT on individuals with Binge Eating Disorder, as DBT has the potential to precipitate excellent results for sufferers.
Published in 2001 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, “Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Binge Eating Disorder” studies the effects of group Dialectical Behavior Therapy on the recurrence of binge eating behaviors in women who fit the diagnostic criteria for Binge Eating Disorder. Telch, Agras, and Linehan (2001) used a group of forty-four women to complete their study on the effects of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) on Binge Eating Disorder. The participants in the study were randomly assigned to group DBT therapy, or put on a wait-list for therapy. The researchers administered the Eating Disorder Evaluation standard to eating disorder diagnoses to both groups of women before and after they were treated.
Within the experiment, the control group was the group waitlisted for the DBT group, while the experimental group was the group actively partaking in the DBT group. All of the participants in both groups were women. According to Telch, Agras, and Linehan (2001), the mean age of the participants was 50 years, with more than ninety percent of the participants being caucasian. The general educational makeup of the group indicated that many of the women were well-educated. All of the participants had graduated high school, and seventy percent of them had completed college. In addition, the average body mass index of the group was very high-- approximately 36.6-- indicating that many of the participants in the study fit the medical definition of obese.
References
Telch, C., Agras, W. and Linehan, M. (2001). Dialectical behavior therapy for binge eating disorder..Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69 (6), 1061-1065.
