EMDR vs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in the treatment of inpatients with obesity, binge eating disorder, and traumatic experiences: the BEmDr Randomized Controlled Trial.

Overweight and obesity are linked with Binge Eating Disorder (BED). Traditionally, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the therapeutic approach indicated both for inpatient and outpatient treatment of BED. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) could be more effective for the treatment of BED, in particular with patients who lived one or more traumatic experiences. Methods: A randomized controlled trial including 31 patients was run in order to test the hypothesis that a 4-week EMDR intervention (n=16) was more effective than a parallel CBT intervention (n=15) in the treatment of inpatients with obesity and BED who experienced a traumatic event at least. Outcomes were the reduction of binge eating symptoms, emotional eating, psychological distress and trauma-related variables, and the improvement of emotion regulation from baseline to treatment completion. Results showed no statistically significant difference between the two treatment conditions, while statistically significant improvements were observed in the whole sample and in several outcome variables: depression, anxiety, stress, emotional eating, binge eating, two DERS domains (Clarity and Strategies), and the DERS total score, two IES-R sub-scales (Intrusion and Hyperarausal) and the IES-R total score but with small standardized sizes of improvements (Cohen’s d). Both interventions may have yielded similar benefits; however, the absence of a control group prevents a clear attribution of these improvements to the interventions, as all participants were concurrently undergoing a structured residential multidisciplinary treatment. Future studies should include larger samples, longer treatment protocols, and follow-up assessments, as well as comparison groups of inpatients not receiving experimental treatments, to better isolate the specific effects of EMDR and CBT.