Secondary psychological outcomes in a controlled trial of Emotional Freedom Techniques and cognitive behaviour therapy in the treatment of food cravings

Controlled trial👥 83 participants⚖️ vs. cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)Moderate rigor✓ Source-checked📍 Australia

In plain English. Eighty-three overweight or obese adults got eight weeks of either group EFT or group CBT, the standard talk-therapy approach, aimed at food cravings. On the side, EFT brought down both anxiety and depression and kept them down for a year, while CBT only moved the needle on depression, not anxiety. The two approaches weren't directly compared for statistical superiority on every measure, so read this as EFT holding its own against a gold-standard therapy rather than beating it outright.

What they found

people took part

Anxiety and depression scores significantly decreased from pre- to post-intervention for the EFT group and were maintained at 6- and 12-month follow-up, while the CBT group showed significant depression improvement but no significant change in anxiety.

How the study worked

Who took partoverweight or obese adults with food cravings (n=83)

What they didIn a controlled trial, a tapping group was compared against a separate comparison group.

Compared withcognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)

Measured withPatient Health Questionnaire (anxiety, depression, somatoform subscales)

💡 Where this could help

If findings like these hold up in larger trials, the promise is simple: a low-cost, self-administered tool that could reach people struggling with weight & food cravings who can't easily access traditional care — at home, between appointments, or where there aren't enough clinicians to go around.

🔬 What to study next

The natural next step: longer-term follow-up to see how durable the benefit is, and an active ('sham tapping') control to isolate what's doing the work.

The full record

Design	Controlled trial
Participants	83 people
Population	overweight or obese adults with food cravings
Comparison group	cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
Outcome measures	Patient Health Questionnaire (anxiety, depression, somatoform subscales)
Journal	Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice
Year	2017
Country	Australia
Language	English
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Study / trial
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Stapleton, P., Bannatyne, A., Chatwin, H., Urzi, K-C., Porter, B., & Sheldon, T. (2017). Secondary psychological outcomes in a controlled trial of Emotional Freedom Techniques and cognitive behaviour therapy in the treatment of food cravings. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2017.06.004

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Weight & Food Cravings · Anxiety · Depression