Emotional Eating in Primary Care: Considerations for Assessment and Management

After participating in this CME activity, the psychiatrist should be better able to:• Describe how to identify and address emotional eating in the primary care setting.

Emotional eating (i.e., eating in response to negative emotional states and stress) is a highly prevalent concern within primary care settings. It is associated with myriad health issues such as the experience of overweight or obesity, increased difficulty losing weight and sustaining weight loss, various eating disorders, diabetes, and heart disease. Given the effects of emotional eating on patient health goals regarding weight loss or management, it is imperative to incorporate interventions that address emotional underpinnings alongside traditional, behaviorally based weight-loss treatment. Ensuring that primary care providers, who represent pivotal frontline touch points for patients interested in weight-related treatment, can identify emotional eating is an important first step in supporting these patients' goals. The primary purpose of this paper is to provide background information and practical guidance for addressing emotional eating in the primary care setting. We summarize theorized biological and psychological mechanisms that underlie emotional eating, and review traditional (i.e., psychological) interventions, with special consideration for adapting available treatments for use in primary care contexts.