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In terms of research, however, a better control group comparison would have been cognitive behavioral therapy, Vazzana said.

"Supportive therapy isn't really a well-established treatment for bulimia, so it's not surprising that [the family-based therapy] was superior," she said. "A more stringent study would be to compare family-based therapy with cognitive behavioral therapy, which is probably in progress."

A second study, this one published in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that a school-based obesity prevention program helped prevent behaviors such as self-induced vomiting or taking laxatives and diet pills.

In this study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, about 4 percent of middle-school girls who received regular health education began vomiting or abusing laxatives or diet pills compared with only 1 percent in the obesity prevention program, called 5-2-1-Go! The program apparently had no effect in middle-school boys.

More information

Visit the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health for more on eating disorders.

SOURCES: Daniel le Grange, Ph.D., associate professor, psychiatry, and director, eating disorders program, University of Chicago; Andrea Vazzana, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor, child and adolescent psychiatry, New York University Child Study Center, New York City; September 2007 Archives of General Psychiatry; September 2007 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine