{"id":562,"date":"2022-08-02T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/?p=562"},"modified":"2024-03-24T03:31:34","modified_gmt":"2024-03-24T03:31:34","slug":"cbt-treatment-of-arfid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/cbt-treatment-of-arfid\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence for the efficacy of treatment for ARFID in Adults"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\t\t
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There are <\/span>several<\/span> promising treatments for <\/span>ARFID<\/span><\/a> in children and adolescents \u2013 which is where most of the research has been focused \u2013 but ARFID affects individuals across the lifespan. <\/span>A paper<\/span><\/a> recently published in the Journal of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy, led by researchers at Harvard Medical School <\/span>claims<\/span> to be the first study to evaluate an ARFID treatment for adults. It <\/span>measured<\/span> the impact of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) on a sample of 15 adults with ARFID.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The therapy for each patient involved multiple sessions \u2013 between 20 and 30 \u2013 each lasting <\/span>50 minutes<\/span> \u2013 delivered over a period lasting an average of 29 weeks. Following the sessions seven of the 15 ARFID patients no longer met the criteria for an ARFID diagnosis \u2013 a success rate of 47% (one patient dropped out during the sessions).<\/span><\/p>\n

The authors claim that this result suggests that CBT for ARFID is a potentially efficacious treatment that requires further evaluation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However<\/span>,<\/span> the authors admit that their study should be treated with caution as it is dependent on such a small sample and also did not include a control group, which is standard procedure for assessing the efficacy of treatments. The lack of a control group means that the authors could not rule out the possibility that the passage of time, or just <\/span>the therapist\u2019s<\/span> attention \u2013 rather than the therapy itself \u2013 was responsible for symptom improvement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also to be borne in mind is the extensive commitment required for the multiple (20-30) sessions of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which involves establishing a regular schedule of eating, education about risk for nutritional deficiencies, tasting <\/span>five<\/span> novel foods per session as well as homework to address the ARFID maintaining mechanisms (sensory sensitivity, lack of interest, fear of aversive consequences).<\/span><\/p>\n

While the success of this therapy is somewhat limited<\/span>, this evidence-based paper <\/span>offers hope that future scientific research studies may identify more effective \u2013 and less arduous \u2013 therapeutic interventions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas, J. J., Becker, K. R., Breithaupt, L., Murray, H. B., & Eddy, K. T. (2021). Cognitive-behavioural therapy for adults with avoidant\/restrictive food intake disorder. Journal of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapy, 31(1), 47-55<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Read more about <\/span>What Is An ARFID Eating Disorder<\/span><\/a> in this insightful blog<\/span><\/p>\n

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Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span> There are several promising treatments for ARFID in children and adolescents \u2013 which is where most of the research has been focused \u2013 but ARFID affects individuals across the lifespan. A paper recently published in the Journal of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy, led by researchers at Harvard Medical School claims to be the first study…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[108,109,85,84],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6311,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/6311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}