Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program

Istanbul Arel University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Eating Disorders; Body Image Disturbance

Treatments: Behavioral: Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program (Experimental Group Condition); Behavioral: Eating Disorders and Body Dissatisfaction: A Group Work (Active Control Group Condition)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04626102

IstanbulArelU

Details and patient eligibility

About

Eating disorders (ED) are serious mental health illnesses interfering psychological, physical and social well-being. Besides the severity of ED, most of the individuals presenting symptoms are either not detected or treated. Among ones undergoing treatment, full recovery and remission are also not very likely. Given many negative consequences of ED and personal, sociocultural and financial barriers for ED treatment and low rates of full recovery, any intervention for preventing the development and/or chronicization of ED would be a useful step for the improvement of public health.

Literature has established that Turkish people represent unhealthy eating attitudes and behaviours as similar to Western societies. Evidence shows that the prevalence of disordered eating attitudes and behaviours in Turkey changed between 2.2% to 12.8%. Prevalence of ED particularly among university students and these problems are also likely to negatively influence students' psychological, social and physical well-being, relationships with pairs, educational attainment and academic success. However, awareness regarding ED, help-seeking and receiving treatment appears to be less likely.

Since there is no ED prevention program available for university students in Turkey, it was aimed to develop a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy oriented 6 session ED prevention program (Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program) for female university students presenting a high risk for ED. A further aim was to examine feasibility, acceptability and efficacy of this program.

Evidence-based clinical guidelines for ED have indicated that CBT is consistently recommended for all subtypes of ED, and CBT oriented prevention programs have been shown to result in a better outcome for university students. Therefore, it was expected that university students who participated in 6 session Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program would present significantly greater reductions in ED related psychopathology, body dissatisfaction, emotion regulation difficulties and internalization and pressure of sociocultural attitudes towards appearance compared to participants in active control group condition (single session Eating Disorders and Body Dissatisfaction: A Group Work) and wait-list control condition. Also, it was expected that the level of acceptability and feasibility of 6 session Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program would be good.

Enrollment: 38 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 18 to 30 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• having a score of EDEQ-Total or EAT - 40 higher than the mean average of female participants in a study conducted among university students in Turkey before
• giving consent during the above-mentioned study for getting an invitation for participating in a study in which a group program for promoting healthy eating attitudes and behaviours.

Exclusion criteria

• current or history of eating disorders diagnosis,
• current substance abuse problem and/or current or past history of psychotic disorders.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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38 participants in 2 patient groups

Enrollment

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants were recruited by using a convenience sampling method. Potential participants were reached through lecturers and professors who are teaching classes at different universities in Istanbul, Turkey. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire package covering Demographic Information Form, Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire (EDEQ), Eating Attitudes Test - 40 (EAT-40), Body Image Satisfaction Questionnaire (BISQ), and Sociocultural Attitudes towards Appearance Questionnaire-4-Revised (SATAQ-4R). Filling out the questionnaire package took approximately 25-minutes.

Intervention Period

Experimental group

Description:

Participants were randomly assigned to one of these conditions: Experimental condition: Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program - 6 weekly sessions, each session was about 45-minutes to 60-minutes Active control condition: Eating Disorders and Body Dissatisfaction: A Group Work - single session about 1.5 hours to 2 hours Wait-list control condition: Participants in this condition were informed that they will be asked to fill out questionnaires that sent to them, and at the end of 6 months, they will be invited to participate in Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Healthy Eating Attitudes and Behaviours Group Program (Experimental Group Condition)

Behavioral: Eating Disorders and Body Dissatisfaction: A Group Work (Active Control Group Condition)