3 - (SYM 127) The Impact of Personalized Treatment for Individuals with the Same Disorder: A Case Series

Enhanced cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT-E) is the gold standard of care for adults with eating disorders (EDs), but up to 50% of individuals do not respond to this treatment. One potential reason for the poor outcomes is the high heterogeneity within ED diagnoses, indicating a need for data-driven personalized treatments. Transdiagnostic Network Informed Personalized Treatment for EDs (T-NIPT-ED) is a ten-session data-based Personalized Treatment that has been found to be feasible, acceptable, and significantly reduce ED symptoms, depression, worry, and increased quality of life. In the current study, we present a follow-up case series from an ongoing randomized controlled trial of T-NIPT-ED versus CBT-E to illustrate how T-NIPT-ED identifies central symptoms for the individual and matches those symptoms to modules of existing or modified evidence-based treatments. We illustrate how three individuals with the same diagnosis receive personalized treatment in T-NIPT-ED based on each one’s underlying, core symptoms identified with data. Participant 1 targeted body dissatisfaction, feeling fat, social appearance anxiety, and drive for thinness with exposure-based exercises, a cognitive intervention, and a values-based intervention. Participant 2’s targeted fear of weight gain, urge to restrict, feeling fat, and drive for thinness using imaginal exposure, CBT-E for regular eating, interoceptive exposures, and automatic thought challenging. Participant addressed concern over mistakes, overvaluation of weight and shape, and fear of physical sensations with exposure exercises, cognitive interventions, values-based interventions, and interoceptive exposures. Finally, we present their scores on their central symptoms, the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, and Clinical Impairment Assessment at pre-, mid-, post-treatment, and 1-month follow-up, highlighting the changes over time. The results of this case series underscore the unique symptom profiles among individuals with the same diagnosis and demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of personalized treatment. This type of treatment can be expanded to additional ED diagnoses as well as diagnoses such as anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders.