UC San Diego

A significant proportion of both healthy and treatment-seeking youth report eating for emotional reasons. Emotional eating (EE) is associated with medical and psychological sequelae including overeating and eating disorder symptoms. Youth with EE are thought to have a predisposition toward a high level of emotional sensitivity, with a tendency to experience emotions intensely, and for a long duration. Interventions are needed to address emotion dysregulation associated with EE. Parent-focused interventions that emphasize training parents to respond to emotion dysregulation in their children have the potential to reduce the incidence of EE. This article describes an emotion-focused parent training intervention for youth who engage in EE.