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Therapist adherence and therapeutic alliance in individual cognitive-behavioural therapy for adolescent binge-eating disorder.

Author
Abstract
:

To evaluate psychological treatments for adolescent binge-eating disorder (BED), reliable information on therapeutic process factors is needed. This study examines therapist adherence and therapeutic alliance and their associations in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for adolescents with BED. In a randomised-controlled efficacy trial, adherence and alliance were objectively determined based on 247 audio-taped CBT sessions from a sample of N = 64 adolescents with BED. Variability of adherence and alliance, explained by treatment module, patient, and therapist were examined using multilevel modeling. Although adherence and alliance were excellent and unaffected by treatment module and therapist, there was significant between-patient variability for both concepts. Adherence was negatively associated with patient's treatment expectation. Alliance was negatively associated with the number of loss of control eating episodes and positively associated with adherence. Excellent adherence supported the internal validity of CBT for adolescent BED. Associations between process factors and patient characteristics demand adequate supervision in CBT.

Year of Publication
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2019
Journal
:
European eating disorders review : the journal of the Eating Disorders Association
Volume
:
27
Issue
:
2
Number of Pages
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182-194
ISSN Number
:
1072-4133
URL
:
https://doi.org/10.1002/erv.2650
DOI
:
10.1002/erv.2650
Short Title
:
Eur Eat Disord Rev
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