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Bulimia Home Treatment Program Article Page. |
| University of Chicago Medical Center
September 7, 2007 Involving Parents In Therapy Doubles Success Rates For Bulimia Treatment Science Daily — In the first randomized controlled trial for adolescent bulimia nervosa to be completed in the US, researchers show that mobilizing parents to help an adolescent overcome the disorder can double the percentage of teens who were able to abstain from binge eating and purging after six months. In the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a team based at the University of Chicago Medical Center show that almost 40 percent of participants in family-based treatment had stopped binging and purging compared to only18 percent of those who received supportive psychotherapy, the standard therapy. Six-months after treatment, almost 30 percent of participants who received family-based treatment were still abstinent compared to only 10 percent of participants who received supportive psychotherapy, which focuses on issues underlying the eating disorder. "Parents are in a unique position to help their adolescents," says study author Dr Daniel le Grange, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Eating Disorders Program at the University of Chicago, "yet treatment typically excludes them from the process. Now we have the evidence that we need to bring them back in." The trial, conducted at the University of Chicago, involved 80 adolescents, aged 12 to 19, with a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa (typically characterized by binge eating and purging) or a strict definition of partial bulimia nervosa. Forty-one patients were randomly assigned to family-based treatment, and thirty-nine patients were randomly assigned to supportive psychotherapy. Patients from each group made 20 visits to the clinic over a six-month period. In family-based treatment, parents and at times even siblings attend clinic sessions with the patient. Parents play an active follow-up role at home, encouraging their adolescents to eat as normally as possible, then monitoring them during and after meals to make sure they eat and are not tempted to purge. "For years parents have been left out of the treatment process," Le Grange said. They often feel guilty about intervening. "But what parent would step aside and play a minimal role in treatment if their child was diagnosed with cancer" Nor should they if a child has an eating disorder. Eating disorders pose serious health hazards." Bulimia cure: a new way to cure it. There are many ways to treat bulimia but not very many of them really cure bulimia. Popular treatment is going to the doctors or clinics or a counselor. How helpful are these? Statistic shows that nearly 90% of suffers relapse after attending these kinds of treatment. What happens to these people is they feel temporary better while they are in the clinic or in a doctor's room, but lose all sense of self-control around food when they come back home or while on their own and unprotected. The next way of treatment is group therapy where sufferers are supposed to get ongoing support and help from other sufferers and a group leader. But this way has many flaws and is not helpful either: it can actually become harmful to many sufferers. The reasons of this are that while in the group there is often a competition for attention. In the group patients often deliberately get worse or engage in more symptoms just to get extra attention from each other or the therapist. This kind of competition always exists in eating disorder help groups but on many different levels. Sometimes it can get out of control and cause a lot of harm to some members of the group, the most venerable ones. Also, while in the group people learn from each other. And they learn not necessary only the good things. They learn a lot of bad stuff too. Like say if a young woman has never heard of drinking ipecac to induce vomiting and learns this technique in group therapy. She may try the technique out herself at home; instead of getting positive help she has just learned how to mask her disorder even more. This can also have a detrimental effect on the group leaving the group leader or member feeling responsible for teaching her. Some doctors prescribe drugs to treat eating disorders but this also does not fix the problem and in the long run even makes things worse. The only way to cure bulimia in my opinion is
to eliminate the reason why people have it. It seems like something inside the person is stronger than their own free will and controls their logical thinking. What is this something? It is the part of the mind that is
responsible for our actions when we do something but we don't
know why we did it. Subconscious blockages are described by many
sufferers as being like voices or senses they have that make them
binge and purge. Subconscious blockages cannot be identified and changed at the rational thinking level; this is where most conventional treatments fail: simply because they think logical actions will fix it. For example, the “broken eye syndrome" gets worse and worse the longer you have bulimia, because the bulimic brain is constantly working on false information and is reinforcing false beliefs. You can talk logic to a bulimia sufferer all day long and it will not help one bit: because bulimia is not logical. To conclude, identifying and eliminating your subconscious blockages is the best and really the only way you will ever cure your bulimia. There are special programs that help bulimics to do this. |