Cognitive behavioral therapies for mental anorexia

To lead a behavioral and cognitive therapy supposes that the patient wishes to change his behavior and that he asks to the therapist to help him by an information, a support and instructions there. This initiative is rarely voluntary at the patient's suffering from anorexia nervosa. These therapies were thus adapted to this pathology. The practice of aspirational interviews is also lawful on an extrapolation from investigations concerning the other pathologies, a priori close. The clinical impression shared by the practitioners formed in these methods is the one of a facilitation of the behavior of the treatment and an intensification of what we call the therapeutic alliance. Problems posed by the particularities of the anorexia nervosa however have the effect of stimulating the evolution of the behavioral therapies. This pathology confronts the therapists with the firm reality of the contradictions and the irrational logics, which are inherent in fact to the human thought. (C) 2007 Elsevier Masson SAS. Tous droits reserves.