Effects of Day-Patient Treatment on Eating Disorder Symptoms in Persons With Bulimia Nervosa: A Meta-Analysis

Outpatient treatment for bulimia nervosa (BN) often fails to reduce core symptoms like binge eating and purging, while inpatient care is costly and separates patients from their everyday environment. Day-patient treatment offers a middle ground by providing intensive daytime therapy with the opportunity to apply skills at home. This meta-analysis evaluated the effectiveness of day-patient treatment for BN and explored potential outcome moderators.

A systematic search yielded 1664 records, and 20 studies were included in the analysis. Outcome variables were changes in questionnaire scores on eating disorder psychopathology, binge eating frequency, purging frequency, and body mass index (BMI) from admission to discharge and, if available, from discharge to follow up.

Eating disorder psychopathology decreased from admission to discharge with a large effect size and remained stable from discharge to follow up. Pooled effect sizes showed large reductions in binge eating and purging frequency from admission to discharge, whereas BMI did not change significantly.

Day-patient treatment effectively reduces eating disorder psychopathology, binge eating, and purging. As BMI seems to remain stable, this may be used to ease patients' weight gain concerns.