This informational handout provides a client-friendly overview of bulimia nervosa and ways to address it.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Our ‘What Is … ?’ series is a collection of one-page information handouts for common mental health conditions. Friendly and explanatory, handouts in the series describe how it can feel to struggle with a difficulty and are reliable sources of information for your clients. Drawing upon established cognitive behavioral models, each handout has a particular focus on maintaining factors that might prevent the problem from getting better.
What Is Bulimia? is designed to help clients with bulimia nervosa to understand more about their condition.
This resource is expertly designed to support clients by:
Designed to help clients affected by bulimia nervosa.
Discuss the common symptoms of bulimia nervosa.
Help the client understand how their symptoms fit together and make sense.
Explore what might be maintaining the client's difficulties.
Point out treatments that can be effective for addressing these issues.
Many people go through periods where they eat more or less than usual. If these episodes are extreme, distressing, or happen often, they may be a sign of bulimia nervosa. Bulimia is a type of eating disorder where you have episodes of binge-eating (eating large amounts of food in an uncontrolled way) and compensation (doing things to prevent weight gain such as vomiting or using laxatives). At some point in their lives, about 3 in every 100 women and 1 in every 100 men develop bulimia (van Eeden et al., 2021). Fortunately, psychological treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are very effective in overcoming bulimia.
The What Is Bulimia? information handout is designed to help clients with bulimia nervosa understand more about their condition. It includes a summary of the most common symptoms of bulimia and insights into why bulimia might not get better by itself, derived from the Fairburn, Cooper & Shafran (2003) transdiagnostic cognitive model of eating disorders.
