Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for eating disorders: Clinical applications of a group treatment

• Eating disorders are exceptionally difficult to treat.
• A small body of research indicates that ACT may be an effective treatment.
• The current paper describes our ACT group treatment for eating disorders.
• We show how we adapted ACT treatment strategies for use with eating disorders.
• The paper also provides tips for successfully implementing the intervention.

Eating disorders, particularly among adult patients with a long course of illness, are exceptionally difficult to treat. The few existing empirically supported treatments for adult patients with bulimia nervosa do not lead to symptom remission for a large portion of patients. For adults with anorexia nervosa there are currently no empirically supported treatments. A small but growing body of research indicates that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may be an effective treatment option for patients with eating disorders. Despite the promise of this approach, there are at present no established protocols with empirical support for an ACT-based treatment for adults with an eating disorder. The goal of the current paper is to describe the development of a semi-structured group-based treatment for eating disorders, discuss the structure of the manual and how we adapted standard ACT treatment strategies for use with an eating disorder population, and to discuss clinical strategies for successfully implementing the intervention. A brief summary of preliminary results of the program support the acceptability and efficacy of this novel treatment approach.