Efficacy of Dialectical Behavior Therapy on Decreasing Weight in Obese Women with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: A Quasi Experimental Study

The growing worldwide prevalence of overweight and obesity, despite treatment strategies remain the health problem. Over the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to psychological factors and a potentially comprehensive, multimodal skills-based treatment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) on weight loss in obese women with emotional and behavioral disorders.

In this quasi-experimental study, statistical population from convenience sampling consisted of 42 obese women with body mass index (BMI) more than 29.9 kg/m2 divided in 3 groups, behavioral, emotional and control. Descriptive and analytic statistics were computed according to demographic information, emotional eating scale and Dutch eating behavior questionnaire. Intervention included 13 sessions of 1.5hr group therapy, DBT-skills training from April to September 2019. Mixed-effect modeling ANOVA with repeated measurements was performed by statistical analyses, IBM SPSS version 24 to study changes in variables over time.

The results demonstrated that the emotional such as anger, anxiety and depression, significantly decrease during the study period. (P-value<0.001) As well as behavioral eating demonstrated significant improvement in restrained eating and decrease in emotional and external eating behaviors right after the end of intervention while trial group experienced significant weight loss.

The present study provides some evidence that DBT-skills training can be effective in decreasing problematic eating behaviors, emotion dysregulations, decreasing BMI