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Improving Treatment Engagement for Adolescents With Bulimia Nervosa

NCT02252822 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 1

Last updated 2016-11-18

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Although 4.7% of adolescents suffer from symptoms of bulimia nervosa (BN), only 1/5 seek treatment. Hesitation to seek treatment is likely related to ego-syntonicity and fear of disclosing symptoms to parents and clinicians. Furthermore, the physical symptoms of BN often go unnoticed by parents and clinicians.

In order to eliminate the barriers that prevent adolescents from seeking treatment, this study will offer anonymous access to online self-help cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for BN. Online CBT (traditional, non-anonymous delivery) has been found to be effective and acceptable treatment for adolescents with BN. Furthermore, in adults, this method has been found to be as effective as specialized treatments, and more cost efficient.

To remain anonymous and accessible, the self-help approach in this study will be provided in a non-guided, or pure format (only online sessions). Studies support that a pure self-help methodology is as effective as a guided version.

Although anonymity may improve accessibility, this study design could also pose challenges in areas such as recruitment, treatment completion and obtaining adequate informed consent. Therefore, before embarking on a larger randomized control trail, we would like to propose a small, non-controlled feasibility study to assess potential issues in these areas.

Primary hypotheses:

Recruitment: Based on communication with public health nurses in the high schools we plan to recruit from, we hypothesize that it is feasible to recruit 1-5 adolescents over a 4-month period from each of the 5 schools, and 1-5 from social media outlets such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook for a total of 5 participants over a 4-month period.

Treatment completion: Based on pervious studies of self-help for adolescent bulimia, we hypothesize that approximately 15% of participants will not complete any sessions, and many will only complete about half of the sessions.

Informed consent: Based on information from large randomized control studies in the UK, we hypothesize that adolescents will be capable of providing online consent, and that we will be able to adequately obtain consent without verbally communicating with participants.

Secondary hypothesis:

We hypothesize a non-guided (pure) version of online CBT-BN offered in an anonymous manner will decrease BN symptoms after treatment completion, and at 3-month follow-up compared to baseline.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Overcoming Bulimia Online Programme

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Nova Scotia Health Authority

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Aaron Keshen, MD, FRCPC · Capital Health, Canada

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
16 Years
Max Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2014-09-30
Primary Completion
2015-04-30
Completion
2015-05-31

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02252822 on ClinicalTrials.gov