Meaning-centered Intervention for Young Women With Weight and Shape Concerns

University of Groningen

Status: Completed

Conditions: Eating Disorder Symptom

Treatments: Behavioral: A meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape concerns

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06462300

PSY-2223-S-0010

Details and patient eligibility

About

Female participants with weight and shape concerns will either receive a six-week meaning-centered intervention led by a trainer or be allocated to a waitlist condition. They will receive the same questionnaires at three time points: Before the intervention, immediately after, and four weeks later.

The researchers hypothesize that a meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape issues will increase participants meaning in life and decrease their eating disorder symptoms immediately after the intervention and at 4-week follow-up when compared to a waitlist condition.

Full description

Female first-year psychology students at the University of Groningen will be screened for weight and shape concerns. Those scoring in the clinically relevant range will be invited to participate in the study. After filling out the baseline measures online, the participants will be randomly allocated to a waitlist or an intervention condition. Participants in the intervention condition will follow a weekly 1-hour online intervention with a trainer for six weeks, including homework assignments. In this intervention, the aim is to increase meaning in life and decrease eating disorder symptoms. All study materials will be offered in English, Dutch, or German. Immediately after the intervention and four weeks later, the participants will receive the same questionnaires again as at baseline. The waitlist participants will not receive any intervention during the six-week period between baseline and post-assessment, but receive the same questionnaires in the same timeframe. Waitlist participants will also have the option to receive the intervention after the study has been finished.

Enrollment: 166 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 16 to 35 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• When screened with the Weight Concerns Scale (WCS; Killen et al., 1994) and when scores of all five items were adjusted to equal a maximum score of 20, leading to a total range between 0 and 100 (cf. Jacobi et al., 2004), participant are eligible if they answer "always" or "often" to the item "Do you ever feel fat?" or have a total score ≥ 47 on the WCS or both

Exclusion criteria

• Current treatment for eating disorder
• not fluent in English, Dutch, or German

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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166 participants in 2 patient groups

Meaning-centered intervention condition

Experimental group

Description:

The group of participants receiving the meaning-centered intervention

Treatment:

Behavioral: A meaning-centered intervention for young women with weight and shape concerns

Waitlist control condition

No Intervention group

Description:

The group of participants not receiving an intervention