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Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings
BACKGROUND: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe mental illness. Drug treatments are not effective and there is no established first choice psychological treatment for adults with AN. Neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with AN have difficulties in cognitive flexibility: these laborator...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2007
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892017/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17550611 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-6-14 |
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author | Tchanturia, Kate Davies, Helen Campbell, Iain C |
author_facet | Tchanturia, Kate Davies, Helen Campbell, Iain C |
author_sort | Tchanturia, Kate |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe mental illness. Drug treatments are not effective and there is no established first choice psychological treatment for adults with AN. Neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with AN have difficulties in cognitive flexibility: these laboratory based findings have been used to develop a clinical intervention based on Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) which aims to use cognitive exercises to strengthen thinking skills. AIMS: 1) To conduct a preliminary investigation of CRT in patients with AN 2) to explore whether cognitive training improves performance in set shifting tasks 3) to explore whether CRT exercises are appropriate and acceptable to AN patients 4) to use the data to improve a CRT module for AN patients. METHODS: Intervention was comprised of ten 45 minute sessions of CRT. Four patients with AN were assessed before and after the ten sessions using five set shifting tests and clinical assessments. At the end, each patient wrote a letter providing feedback on the intervention. RESULTS: Post intervention, three of the five set shifting assessments showed a moderate to large effect size in performance and two showed a large effect size in performance, both indicative of improved flexibility. Patients were aware of an improvement in their cognitive flexibility qualitative feedback was generally positive towards CRT. DISCUSSION: This preliminary study suggests that CRT changed performance on flexibility tasks and may be beneficial for acute, treatment resistant patients with AN. Feedback gathered from this small case series has enabled modification of the intervention for a future larger study, for example, by linking exercises with real life behavioural tasks and including exercises that encourage global thinking. CONCLUSION: This exploratory study has produced encouraging data supporting the use of CRT in patients with AN: it has also provided insight into how the module should be tailored to maximise its effectiveness for people with acute AN. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-1892017 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2007 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-18920172007-06-14 Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings Tchanturia, Kate Davies, Helen Campbell, Iain C Ann Gen Psychiatry Case Report BACKGROUND: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe mental illness. Drug treatments are not effective and there is no established first choice psychological treatment for adults with AN. Neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with AN have difficulties in cognitive flexibility: these laboratory based findings have been used to develop a clinical intervention based on Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) which aims to use cognitive exercises to strengthen thinking skills. AIMS: 1) To conduct a preliminary investigation of CRT in patients with AN 2) to explore whether cognitive training improves performance in set shifting tasks 3) to explore whether CRT exercises are appropriate and acceptable to AN patients 4) to use the data to improve a CRT module for AN patients. METHODS: Intervention was comprised of ten 45 minute sessions of CRT. Four patients with AN were assessed before and after the ten sessions using five set shifting tests and clinical assessments. At the end, each patient wrote a letter providing feedback on the intervention. RESULTS: Post intervention, three of the five set shifting assessments showed a moderate to large effect size in performance and two showed a large effect size in performance, both indicative of improved flexibility. Patients were aware of an improvement in their cognitive flexibility qualitative feedback was generally positive towards CRT. DISCUSSION: This preliminary study suggests that CRT changed performance on flexibility tasks and may be beneficial for acute, treatment resistant patients with AN. Feedback gathered from this small case series has enabled modification of the intervention for a future larger study, for example, by linking exercises with real life behavioural tasks and including exercises that encourage global thinking. CONCLUSION: This exploratory study has produced encouraging data supporting the use of CRT in patients with AN: it has also provided insight into how the module should be tailored to maximise its effectiveness for people with acute AN. BioMed Central 2007-06-05 /pmc/articles/PMC1892017/ /pubmed/17550611 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-6-14 Text en Copyright © 2007 Tchanturia et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Case Report Tchanturia, Kate Davies, Helen Campbell, Iain C Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
title | Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
title_full | Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
title_fullStr | Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
title_full_unstemmed | Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
title_short | Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
title_sort | cognitive remediation therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa: preliminary findings |
topic | Case Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892017/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17550611 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-6-14 |
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