The What Keeps Bulimia Going? handout presents key factors that maintain bulimia nervosa (BN).
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.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
The “What Keeps It Going?” series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their disorders persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Bulimia Going? is designed to help clients experiencing bulimia nervosa understand more about their condition.
Understanding what keeps bulimia nervosa going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients affected by BN.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
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 nervosa is associated with a wide spectrum of experiences including binge eating, use of compensatory behaviors to avoid weight gain (e.g., vomiting), and concerns about shape, weight, and eating.
Research studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a helpful psychological therapy for bulimia. CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they’re not so interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going, and what they can do to put it out. This is because if they can work out what keeps a problem going, they can treat the problem by ‘removing the fuel’ and interrupting this maintaining cycle.
Studies suggest that bulimia is often maintained by several different factors. The What Keeps Bulimia Going? information handout describes some of the key parts which maintain bulimia. It illustrates them in a vicious cycle or 'flower' format in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate maintenance cycle. Helping clients to understand more about these processes is an essential part of cognitive therapy for bulimia. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences.
