This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Cognitive Therapy  • Eating Disorders  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The report by Halmi and colleagues¹ on "relapse" in bulimia nervosa is of considerable importance since it raises serious doubts about the clinical value of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based treatment for this eating disorder.² The finding of note is that 44% of those participants with an excellent posttreatment outcome (total remission from binge eating and purging) relapsed within just 4 months of completing treatment. However, we suggest that to interpret this observation, 2 points need to be clarified.

The first point concerns the clinical significance of these relapses since no explicit definition was provided in the report. It is essential to know what thresholds were used to define relapse. Did all of these participants develop an eating disorder of clinical significance, or were subclinical symptomatic states also classed as relapses? Also, do the authors know whether these relapses persisted or might they have been temporary setbacks?

The . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Christopher G. Fairburn, FRCPsych; Zafra Cooper, DPhil
Oxford University Department of Psychiatry
Warneford Hospital
Oxford OX3 7JX
England
(e-mail: credo@medicine.ox.ac.uk)

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?