Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Despite the inimical psychological and medical complications of anorexia nervosa (AN), and its typical onset during early adolescence, there are very few randomized clinical trials (RCT's) that examine treatments for this population. These RCT's have typically examined the model of family therapy that centers around parental re-feeding techniques developed at the Maudsley Hospital in the 1980s; to date, this type of family therapy has proven to be the most efficacious treatment for adolescent AN. However, the efficacy of other treatments (e.g. group therapy, individual therapy) or combinations of treatment has not been empirically demonstrated. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT), a process-experiential approach, shows promise for adolescent AN due to its ability to facilitate emotional processing, acceptance, and self-regulation of negative affect. Some argue that a deficiency in identifying, labeling, processing, and regulating emotion (specifically negative affect), referred to as Alexithymia, plays a central role in the pathogenesis and maintenance of eating disorders. Method: This study will investigate the added value of a group-based EFT program for adolescents with AN using a randomized control trial design and a one-year follow up to measure maintenance of treatment effects. Adolescents who meet DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for AN or ED-NOS with restricting symptoms will be randomized to three groups: 1) family treatment 2) family treatment in addition to group-based EFT (intervention) or 3) family treatment in addition to psycho-educational group sessions on body image (to control for effects of contact with peers and therapists). Significance: if combined family treatment and group-based EFT is associated with a significant reduction in eating disorder symptoms relative to family treatment alone, that is the current standard for treating adolescent AN, adolescents will have a greater chance of fighting this life threatening disorder.