The treatment of eating disorders as addiction among adolescent females

As science and medicine enter the new millennium, the influences of genetics and neurochemistry as high-risk determinants in the etiology and development of eating disorders are increasingly manifest in professional literature. Eating disorders are now recognized as major medical and psychiatric problems affecting millions throughout the world. Psychoeducational, cognitive, behavioral, and psychopharmacologic treatments form the basis of most interventions which, for the most part, tend to view the eating disorder as a symptom of underlying psychopathology. The Israel Counseling and Treatment Center of the North has been treating eating disorders as addictive disease by applying the twelve step program of the Anonymous Fellowships as an adjunct to counseling and treatment for those who suffer from compulsive overeating and bulimia. Following the ongoing program of interventions with adults, a counseling group for adolescent females was co-facilitated under the supervision of the author. A co-therapist, in recovery from bulimia and comulsive overeating, uses the twelve step philosophy and served as a role model in this group intervention. Another sample of adolescent females was offered individual counseling adhering to the same addiction treatment approach. Success rates were operationally defined and measured by weight loss in the obese population and the cessation of purging behaviors among bulimic subjects for a six-month period. The two adolescent treatment samples had success rates of 62% and 33% respectively. A higher success rate of 71% was observed with adult bulimic females who participated in group counseling. A mean weight loss of 3.9 kg for the small sample of adolescents and a 9.7 kg. mean weight loss for obese adults in treatment was reported. The theoretical basis of the addiction treatment paradigm for eating disorders is presented. Results and problems encountered specific to treating the adolescent population are discussed.