NEDA TOOLKIT for Parents
Treatment Glossary
• Antidepressants Prescription medications that
are FDA-approved for the treatment of major
depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive
disorder. They are also used to treat eating disorders
with the goal of alleviating the depression and
anxiety that often coexist with an eating disorder.
• Behavior Therapy (BT) A type of psychotherapy
that uses principles of learning to increase the
frequency of desired behaviors and/or decrease
the frequency of problem behaviors. Subtypes of
BT include dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and
exposure and response prevention (EXRP).
• Cognitive Therapy (CT) A type of
psychotherapeutic treatment that attempts to
change a patient’s feelings and behaviors by
changing the way the patient thinks about or
perceives his/her significant life experiences.
Subtypes include cognitive analytic therapy and
cognitive orientation therapy.
• Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) A type of
cognitive therapy that focuses its attention on
discovering how a patient’s problems have evolved
and how the procedures the patient has devised
to cope with them may be ineffective or even
harmful. CAT is designed to enable people to gain
an understanding of how the difficulties they
experience may be made worse by their habitual
coping mechanisms. Problems are understood in
the light of a person’s personal history and life
experiences. The focus is on recognizing how these
coping procedures originated and how they can be
adapted. • Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) CBT is a goal-
oriented, short-term treatment that addresses
the psychological, familial, and societal factors
associated with eating disorders. Therapy is
centered on the principle that there are both
behavioral and attitudinal disturbances regarding
eating, weight, and shape.
• Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) Since
patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) have a
tendency to get trapped in detail rather than seeing
the big picture, and have difficulty shifting thinking
among perspectives, this newly investigated brief
psychotherapeutic approach targets these specific
thinking styles and their role in the development
and maintenance of an eating disorder. Currently,
it’s usually conducted side by side with other forms
of psychotherapies and has only been tested in
individuals with anorexia nervosa.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) A type
of behavioral therapy that views emotional
deregulation as the core problem in eating
disorders. It involves a structured, time-limited
therapy teaching people new skills to regulate
negative emotions and replace dysfunctional
behavior. (See also Behavioral Therapy.)
• Equine/Animal-assisted Therapy A treatment
program in which people interact with horses
and become aware of their own emotional
states through the reactions of the horse to their
behavior. • Exercise Therapy An individualized exercise
plan that is written by a doctor or rehabilitation
specialist, such as a clinical exercise physiologist,
physical therapist, or nurse. The plan takes into
account an individual’s current medical condition
and provides advice for what type of exercise to
perform, how hard to exercise, how long, and how
many times per week.
• Exposure with Response Prevention (EXRP)
EXRP is a type of behavioral therapy effective at
treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The
treatment strategy emphasizes graded exposure to
anxiety-provoking situations, such as feared foods,
and interruption of maladaptive anxiety-reducing
behaviors such as purging. (See also Behavioral
Therapy.) • Expressive Therapy A nondrug, nonpsychotherapy
form of treatment that uses the performing
and/or visual arts to help people express their
thoughts and emotions. Whether through dance,
movement, art, drama, drawing, painting, etc.,
expressive therapy provides an opportunity for
communication that might otherwise remain
repressed. • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
(EMDR) A nondrug and nonpsychotherapy form of
treatment in which a therapist repetitively moves
an object in front of the patient and asks them to
focus on the item while also recalling a traumatic
event. It is proposed that the act of tracking while
concentrating allows a different level of processing
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