Emotional dysregulation, interoceptive deficits, and treatment outcomes in patients with eating disorders

Eating disorders are often extremely difficult to treat. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between emotion regulation and interoceptive deficits with treatment outcomes. Admission and discharge data on the EDI-3 completed by individuals (n = 76) who had attended the Eating Disorder Program at Homewood Health Centre were analyzed using bivariate correlations and linear regressions to examine the relationship between emotion dysregulation, interoceptive deficits, and treatment outcomes at this center. Positive change in emotion regulation and interoceptive skills during treatment was found to significantly predict less risk of eating disorder at discharge (R-2 = .144, p = .001). Implications for clinical research suggest that prospectively appraising the effect of enhanced emotional and interoceptive skills training in eating disorder programs may lead to improvement in understanding of patient outcomes.