Group Psychotherapy with Obese Disordered-Eating Adults with Body-Image Disturbances: An Integrated Model

Body-image disturbances and body-image misperceptions are common phenomena in the adult obese or disordered eating population, but they have received scant notice in group psychotherapy literature. This paper integrates an important missing conceptual link of body-image development and offers a group psychotherapy treatment model. This paper does not address the eating disorders, i.e., bulimia and anorexia nervosa. The integrated concept described here will show how a group psychotherapy model can effectively treat body image disturbances which often stem from developmental deficits. It also addresses problems with those patients, who, after weight loss, continue to have misperceptions of their size and shape, and experience shame and self-loathing as a result.