Anorexia Nervosa: Cognitive Theory

Question 1

Cognitive distortions

Answer 1

• faulty, biased, irrational ways of thinking that mean we perceive ourselves, other people and the world usually negatively

Question 2

Disturbed perceptions

Answer 2

• having perceptions of their body and other people, certain types and quantities of food are perceived as unhealthy, misperception of been overweight

Question 3

Support for disturbed perceptions

Answer 3

• Rebecca Murphy et al
• argued that all other clinal features of AN stem from disturbed perceptions as people with AN become more critical of their body
• cognitive distortions and disturbed perceptions linking to body weight and shape are linked to AN symptoms

Question 4

Williamson et al

Answer 4

• 37pts diagnosed with AN used body image assessment to estimate current body size and indicate their ideal size
• control group of 95 pts who did not have eds performed the same task
• findings: pts with AN had significantly less accurate in their size estimates than controls, with marked tendency to overestimate their size, body shape ideal was also significantly thinner for AN pts than controls

Question 5

Irrational beliefs

Answer 5

• social aspect: need to be thin for others to like them, if they’re excluded they blame that on their weight
• all or nothing thinking
• catastrophising
• perfectionism -»

Question 6

Perfectionism

Answer 6

• applies across all areas; academic, relationship, career aims
• accompanied by intensive record keeping
• set impossibly high standard which are unachieveable
• Hewitt: stated that when goals are reached or exceeded, the desire for perfectionism isnt met, but merely pushes the goal even further into more unrealistic targets

Question 7

Cognitive inflexibility

Answer 7

• Treeasure and Schmidt: cognitive interpersonal maintenance model, suggests AN suffers experience problems with set-shifting
• tend to apply persistently the same skills in a changed situation

EXAMPLE:
- vulnerable people start a WL process they rigidly persist, continue to perceive themselves as loosing weight, find hard to switch to adaptive thinking about body size, after loosing weight they struggle to swap back

Question 8

Treatment application

Answer 8

• Grave et al:
• enhanced CBT showed substantial increase in weight and decrease in concerns about body shape amounts 26 hospitalised AN patients which was maintained after discharge in a one-year follow-up

Question 9

More treatment application

Answer 9

• Fairborn: compared CBT-E with interpersonal psychotherapy, leading alt treatment hat has no cognitive element. 130 patients with an ed were randomised to either CBT-E or ITP
• end of 20 week treatment, 2/3s or CBT-E pts met criteria for remission compared to 1/3 or the IPT participants