The Effects of Eating Disorder Psychotherapy: A Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Behavior and Non-Cognitive Behavior Approaches

Psychotherapies, or “talk therapies”, are the standard treatment for EDs. There is an extensive amount of research supporting the use of psychotherapies for EDs, with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) being the preferred approach. Research also supports the use of other non-CBT psychotherapies for EDs, including interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), and psychodynamic or emotion-focused therapy (EFT). Due to the large amount of variation across studies, further investigation of these non-CBT psychotherapies is needed. A meta-analytic database is essential for summarizing and integrating the results of these studies to inform clinical practice, guidelines, and future research. This project will contribute to the establishment of a meta-analytic database on ED psychotherapies through the Metapsy Initiative. Metapsy is an open-access digital platform containing the results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of psychological interventions for a wide range of mental disorders. The initiative has recently developed a meta-analytic database of all RCTs of CBT for EDs compared to inactive controls. As Metapsy does not yet have a database for RCTs of non-CBT psychotherapies for EDs, this project will involve the initial database development and meta-analysis to determine the relative efficacy of non-CBT options for treating EDs.