[Efficacy of intervention with externalization therapy for eating disorders]

Externalization has been one of the effective methods in the fields of brief therapy, family therapy, and psycho-education in recent years. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of intervention with externalization at the first stage of therapy in 25 patients with eating disorders. The subjects consisted of 11 patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and 14 with bulimia nervosa (BN). The Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) was evaluated at the first session, the 10th session, and six months later. The obtained results showed intervention with externalization resulted in significant decreases in not only total EDI score but also all the EDI subscale scores. We also found that there were great differences between the EDI subscale scores of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa patients. Therapy was significantly less effective for patients with anorexia nervosa than for those with bulimia nervosa, and much less effective for the restricting type of anorexia nervosa. In addition, all the EDI subscale scores were significantly decreased, irrespective of the complication of personality disorder. The efficacy of intervention with externalization continued for six months. Especially in patients with anorexia nervosa, there were significant decreases in the EDI subscale scores when compared with the scores in the 10th session. The present findings indicates that initial intervention with externalization is effective for treating eating disorders, regardless of the severity of illness.