Expectations and experiences of treatment in eating disorders

The present study presents the development of a self-report measure of treatment expectations and experiences for eating disorder patients. Patients participating in a Swedish multi-center study (N = 461) who had been followed-up 6 months after initial assessment were examined on the Eating Disorder Patient's Expectations and Experiences of Treatment Questionnaire (EDPEX). The scale consists of 14 items comprising three subscales (Support, Control, and Insight). Separate versions were used for measuring expectations and subsequent experiences of treatment interventions. Inter-item reliability was satisfactory, and principal components analysis reflected the scale structure. When treatment experiences and change in eating disorder and psychiatric symptomatology were used to predict treatment satisfaction, experiences of support alone predicted 22% of the variance in treatment satisfaction one year later. The EDPEX can be a useful and economical measure for assessing treatment expectations and experiences among eating disorder patients.