Cognitive Training for Patients With Eating Disorders

Summary

Eating disorders are severe mental illnesses, mainly affecting adolescent- and young adult women. The prognoses for eating disorders are relatively poor, and a large part of patients with these illnesses do not benefit from available conventional therapies. After decades of research into the causes of eating disorders, there is now compelling evidence for specific neuropsychological difficulties in patients affected by eating disorders. These neuropsychological difficulties are characterized by cognitive and behavioral rigidity (poor set-shifting abilities), as well as difficulties related to central coherence, planning and impulse control. Surprisingly, few therapies specifically target these difficulties, and they are rarely incorporated into treatment. Cognitive Remediation Therapy has shown promising results as an adjunctive therapeutic intervention for patients with anorexia Nervosa. The primary aim of this randomized controlled trial is thus to investigate the effect of Cognitive Remediation Therapy on neuropsychological function, symptoms of eating disorders and general mental health, quality of life and motor activity in women with both eating disorders (transdiagnostic) and these specific cognitive difficulties.

Conditions

• Feeding and Eating Disorders
• Anorexia Nervosa
• Bulimia Nervosa
• Binge-Eating Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Cognitive Remediation Therapy

Nine individual transdiagnostic CRT sessions will be delivered once per week, each session lasting approximately 45 minutes. Building on previously published CRT manuals for anorexia nervosa and obesity, a transdiagnostic CRT manual developed for this project will be used during the course of CRT treatment. The manual comprises an introduction to CRT for eating disorders, and a detailed nine-session structure incorporating cognitive and behavioral tasks in the following domains; (1) planning-impulsivity, (2) flexibility-rigidity and (3) central coherence-attention to details. A certain set of guiding questions will accompany each task with the aim of stimulating metacognition (i.e. thinking about thinking).

OTHER

Treatment as usual

According to Norwegian guidelines established by the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the patients are likely to receive treatment focusing directly on the ED symptomatology, i.e normalization of weight in the case of underweight, reduction of binging and purging and normalization of other ED related thoughts and behaviors. Since both in-patients, patients in day treatment and out-patients will be included in the study, the number of hours with therapeutic interventions will vary. Records of the participants' received number of therapeutic hours will be logged weekly during the intervention for participants in both arms of the study.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• St. Olavs Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Helse Nord-Trøndelag HF

  collaborator OTHER

• Norwegian University of Science and Technology

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Ute Gabriel, PhD · Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

16 Years

Max Age

36 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-03-01

Primary Completion

2024-06-22

Completion

2026-07-31

Countries

• Norway

Study Locations