doi:10.1016/j.brat.2004.12.006 
Copyright © 2005 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
A meta-analysis of psychological and pharmacological treatments for Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Jaime Williams, Thomas Hadjistavropoulos
, 
and Donald Sharpe
Department of Psychology, University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada S4S 0A2
Received 11 August 2004;
revised 17 December 2004;
accepted 23 December 2004.
Available online 14 March 2005.
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Abstract
Although psychological and pharmacological treatment approaches for Body Dysmorphic Disorder have been evaluated, the relative effectiveness of these two types of interventions has not been examined. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials and case series studies involving psychological (i.e., behavioural, cognitive-behavioural, cognitive) or medication therapies. Our findings support the effectiveness of both types of therapy, but suggest that cognitive-behavioural treatment may be the most useful. These findings require cross-validation through large-scale clinical trials.
Keywords: Body Dysmorphic Disorder; Meta-analysis; Cognitive-behaviour therapy; Treatment studies
Table 1.
Samples, study design, demographics, and treatments investigated in pharmacotherapy studies
Note. RCT=randomized control trial. Under ‘Dosing’ standard deviation appear within square brackets.
Table 2.
Samples, study design, demographics, and treatments investigated in psychological therapy studies
Note. CT, cognitive therapy; BT, behaviour therapy; CBT, cognitive behaviour therapy; RCT, randomized control trial; SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
a Since the outcome measures were the same for each patient and raw data were available, we were able to calculate the necessary means/standard deviations and treat this study as a case series design.
b We only analysed the data of the subsample of patients who were not on medication concurrently with their treatment.
Table 3.
Means and standard deviations for body dysmorphic disorder symptom severity measures and depression measures
Note. BDD-CGI, Clinical Global Impressions Scale specific to Body Dysmorphic Disorder; BDD-NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health Global Obsessive Compulsive Scale Modified for Body Dysmorphic Disorder; BDD-YBOCS, Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for BDD; YBOCS-BDD_C, Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for BDD-Compulsion Score; YBOCS-BDD_O, Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for BDD-Obsession Score; BDDE, The Body Dysmorphic Disorder Examination; BDDSS, Specific Rating Scale for Body Dysmorphic Disorder; BDI, Beck Depression Inventory; FQ-ADS, Fear Questionnaire, Anxiety-Depression Score; HAD-Dep, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Inventory-Depression Subscale; HAM-D, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression; MADRS, Montgomery-Asberg Scale for Depression; PTU, Psychological Treatment Unit Scale.
Table 4.
Effect sizes for symptom severity and depression outcome measures
Note. BDD-CGI, Clinical Global Impressions Scale specific to Body Dysmorphic Disorder; BDD-NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health Global Obsessive Compulsive Scale Modified for Body Dysmorphic Disorder; BDD-YBOCS, Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for BDD; BDDE, The Body Dysmorphic Disorder Examination; BDDSS, Specific Rating Scale for Body Dysmorphic Disorder; BDI, Beck Depression Inventory; FQ-ADS, Fear Questionnaire, Anxiety-Depression Score; HAD-Dep, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Inventory-Depression Subscale; HAM-D, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression; MADRS, Montgomery-Asberg Scale for Depression; PTU, Psychological Treatment Unit Scale.
Abstract
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