EMDR Psychotherapy in an Eating Disorder Center. A RCT in comparison with Psychodynamic Psychotherapy”

Nutrition and Eating Disorders or Eating Disorders (EDs) represent the most frequent persistent mental illness in adolescence and the co-occurrence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is relevant in ED. Psychotherapy is a core of ED treatments, but there is no clear consensus regarding which kind of psychotherapy. EMDR psychotherapy has shown to improve ED symptoms and general psychopathology in ED but there is a lack of RCTs that use a comparison group for EMDR psychotherapies of ED. The aim of this proposal is to evaluate the psychotherapeutic pathways of individuals suffering from an ED comparing EMDR psychotherapy whit psychodynamic psychotherapy in a randomized controlled trial protocol. Subject will be recruited at the Eating Disorder Center of Piedmont in Turin and will undergo twenty sessions of EMDR or psychodynamic psychoterapy. Subject will be also treated within a multimodal, integrated care setting. Baseline clinical data will be collected, and subjects and therapists will complete psychometric test evaluating eating and general psychopathology, the presence of trauma and post traumatic symptoms. Data will be collected at different time point with a follow up of one year.