Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a one-day intervention for problematic eating behaviors and body image concerns

This study was a small randomized control trial examining the effectiveness of a one-day, 8-hour, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) workshop for individuals with disordered eating behaviors and body image concerns. Of the 49 participants, 24 participants were randomized to a one-month waitlist control condition and 25 participants were randomized to the immediate ACT treatment condition. Participants were men and women with problematic eating behaviors and body image concerns, age 18 and older, recruited from the larger San Francisco Bay Area. Exclusion criteria included individuals with a self-reported BMI under 17.5 and individuals with severe cognitive deficits. Participants on psychiatric medication must have had been stable on all medications for at least three months at the time of recruitment.;Participants assigned to the waitlist control group completed four measures at the time of enrollment, and again at a one-month follow-up. Waitlist participants were able to attend a treatment workshop after their participation in the study was complete. Participants randomly assigned to the ACT treatment condition completed the four assessment measures prior to beginning the workshop, and at one-month and three-month follow-up dates. The baseline and follow-up measures were the same and included the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), the Body Image Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (BI-AAQ), the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Compared to the waitlist condition, ACT workshop participants showed significant decreases in disordered-eating pathology and significant increases in body image acceptance at a one-month follow-up. No significant changes were found in dispositional mindfulness or emotion regulation capacities. A within-in subjects analysis found that decreases in disordered eating and increases in body image acceptance were maintained at a three-month follow-up for ACT workshop participants. Body image acceptance was found to be a mediating variable for changes in disordered-eating pathology.