Treatment Components of Inpatient and Day Clinic Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa: The Patient's Perspective

The acceptance of a treatment depends on what patients experience as helpful or not. In the treatment of anorexia nervosa, the patient's perspective is of special importance as patients are typically highly ambivalent concerning a change in their dysfunctional attitudes and behaviour. 102 patients with anorexia nervosa (ICD-10) evaluated the components of a complex, multimodal treatment programme (inpatient and day clinic) at the end of therapy or follow-up. Overall, psychodynamic as well as symptom-oriented treatment components were experienced as "helpful". Psychodynamic individual sessions received the best assessments. Individual sessions got higher ratings than group sessions. Patients with less successful outcomes described symptom oriented elements like weight goals and work on eating behaviour as significantly less helpful. Lower rankings of some symptom oriented components were associated with more overall symptom severity and bulimic pathology and may point to a feeling of being overtaxed with the programme or a lack of motivation to change.