Cognitive Remediation Therapy in Anorexia Nervosa

Cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) is an intensive training cognitive therapy that encourages people to reflect on and try to modify the way they think, with a particular focus on improving cognitive flexibility. It is a manualised therapist-led intervention consisting of multiple versions of a variety of tasks and mental exercises that address the difficulties in flexibility and holistic processing. CRT is an individual 10-sessions long program (2 sessions per week).

The Sham therapy (ST) has been designed to match the CRT format: an individual manualised therapist-led 10-sessions long program (2 sessions per week). ST sessions have been designed so as to avoid set-shifting and central coherence training. Rather, ST is a manualised sham intervention consisting of multiple exercises on 3 domains: soft physical activity, emotional expression recognition and interpersonal functioning.