Reflections on the Eating Disorder Research Society and Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Meetings

Reflections on the Eating Disorder Research Society and Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Meetings
​
​by: Cheri A Levinson, Ph.D.

The last weekend of October was a busy one, as I was attending two meetings at once! I had the chance to attend the Eating Disorder Research Society for the first time, as well as the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. I left both conferences full of new ideas. Here are some of the highlights of what I learned:

Heather Thompson-Brenner presented work on disseminating the Unified Protocol for Emotional Disorders in a Residential Care Facility (for eating disorders). This work is really exciting because it suggested that targeting underlying emotional disorders may be an effective treatment in a residential level of care. I am not aware of much work identifying treatments that work in such a high level of care, let alone one that is targeting symptoms of multiple disorders. I am hopeful we will see more of this in the coming years.

Eric van Furth presented his work on the top research priorities for eating disorders identified by patients, carers, and families. Some of the top priorities were identifying if clinicians should target the eating disorder or the underlying problems first, comorbidity, and the development of personalized treatment (and see below on how we might develop these treatments). Dr. Furth also discussed his hope that funding agencies would pay more attention to what patients and carers asked for. I whole-heartedly agree. This type of research seems like a great starting point for identifying clinical research that is applicable and helpful to the people who are actually suffering from these problems.

Some other highlights from EDRS. Laura Berner presented her work showing that there are brain regions that are associated with feelings of loss of control eating, research was presented showing patients did better when randomly assigned to day treatment than to inpatient treatment, and Patrick Kennedy gave the keynote address urging eating disorder researchers to think more globally about connecting with other non-eating disorder groups.

Now on to ABCT. I didn’t get to spend as much time at ABCT, but there were two highlights that stood out to me. First, Robert Krueger presented his work showing how the level of analysis impacts how psychopathology is defined. At the broadest level all psychopathology clumps together, it then separates into two clusters (externalizing and internalizing) and then an OCD cluster emerges. And guess what falls into the OCD cluster? Eating disorders!

Last, Aaron Fisher presented work using ecological momentary assessment to develop personalized interventions. I had several discussions with other colleagues about this idea and I am really excited about the possibilities that might come from these methods. Let me explain using network analysis. If you assess symptoms say 100 times across several weeks, you can use this data to build an individual network of symptoms. You can then identify what symptoms may be of specific importance within the individual and develop treatments targeted at that symptom. Why am I so excited about this idea? Anorexia nervosa is a particularly heterogeneous disorder and I think this method might pave the way for personalized treatments specially designed for each individual.
​
All in all a great (two!) conferences. I’m already looking forward to next year.