| Bulimia nervosa (BN), a serious eating disorder in which women have been disproportionately impacted, has had a lifetime prevalence rate of 1-4.2% (Herzog & Eddy, 2007). Although individuals with BN have often been treated in outpatient and inpatient facilities, due to factors such as chronicity and severity, a percentage of individuals diagnosed with BN have required residential treatment (Costin, 2007). Yet, despite the growing number of residential treatment centers in the United States (Frisch, Herzog, & Franko, 2006), qualitative studies on residential treatment have been limited, especially those focused on women who have been admitted to residential treatment multiple times and have recovered. Thus, the objectives of the current study were two-fold: (a) to conduct a qualitative study of women with at least 12 months of abstinence from bulimia nervosa after multiple admissions to residential treatment; and (b) to explore the experiences of expert clinicians treating patients with BN. This investigator did not meet the first objective, due to lack of participant data. Instead, this investigator conducted a professional presentation, illuminating the gaps in the literature to an audience at the UCLA Staff and Faculty Counseling Center while also exploring data collected from expert clinicians and researchers. |
