The paper reports on the clinical characteristics, treatment and results of a group of 41 patients suffering from anorexia nervosa. All patients were diagnosed according to DSM-III criteria. Mean age was 18.6 years, within a range from 12 to 33 years. The group was formed by 40 female patients and 1 male. Twenty-nine percent of the patients had previously received treatment. Duration of treatment fell within a range of 10–36 months, 18–24 being the most frequent. Forty-four and a half percent of the patients were admitted to hospital with a 59-day mean time of hospitalization and treatment was positive in over 80% of cases. Two patients suffered a relapse during the first 2 or 3 years, but later recovered. Five years after the beginning of treatment, 1 patient suffered a relapse and received supplementary treatment.

Thought suppression has been previously associated with increased frequency of suppression target thoughts during and after efforts to suppress. All previous research has investigated the effect of attempts to suppress a single target thought. Given that the majority of people with conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder report multiple distressing intrusive thoughts, the generalizability of previous research to real clinical situations is questionable. We sought to extend previous thought suppression research by investigating the comparative effect of attempting to suppress one, vs attempting to suppress three, personally relevant target thoughts. We observed an immediate enhancement effect, but no evidence for the rebound effect. Attempts to suppress three targets resulted in the same total number of intrusions as attempts to suppress a single target. These results are consistent with the Ironic Process of Mental Control model.