Brief group psychoeducation for bulimia nervosa. II: Prediction of clinical outcome

Abstract

Forty-one subjects with bulimia nervosa completed a brief intervention that was designed to promote symptom management. A wide variety of clinical and psychometric variables were examined for their predictive utility in determining the clinical outcome of subjects after treatment. The following pretreatment variables were most strongly associated with a poor outcome: greater self-reported depression, higher frequency of vomiting, and a history of low adult body weight. Contrary to expectations, pretreatment levels of self-reported borderline organization were unrelated to outcome. It is suggested that subject by treatment interactions may partially account for the lack of robust prognostic factors which typifies the current treatment literature on bulimia nervosa.