Leveraging Social Media to Identify and Connect Teens With Eating Disorders to a Mobile Guided Self-Help Mobile Intervention

Summary

Clinical or subclinical eating disorders (EDs) impact 10% of individuals in their lifetime and are marked by significant functional impairment, early mortality, chronicity, and emotional distress. ED symptoms often emerge in adolescence, with peak onset age in the teenage years. Early recognition and treatment of these devastating illnesses are needed to prevent long-term consequences and a chronic course. Most (80%) individuals with EDs, including teens with EDs (TwEDs), do not receive treatment. Due to major barriers to access and to the delivery of treatment for TwEDs, there is a need for a new model of service delivery that can identify and help TwEDs. We demonstrated our ability to harness social media to identify and efficiently recruit large numbers of TwEDs. Our team has successfully developed a guided self-help cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based mobile app for previous studies and have adapted this app to address the specific needs of TwEDs. In proposed study, we will test this updated mHealth intervention, which includes simplified language and tailored content relevant to adolescent issues and a social networking feature designed to facilitate group exchanges. This mHealth intervention will be investigated among 161 TwEDs recruited from Instagram/Facebook to test preliminary efficacy and feasibility of this mHealth intervention to improved eating disorder symptoms among TwEDs not currently engaged in treatment. We will also garnering feedback via a mixed methods approach on the efficiency, technical effectiveness, and satisfaction with mHealth intervention content and features. Participants will be randomized to one of 3 study arms, including a control group (self-help version of the app), a group with access to the coached mobile app only, and a group with access to the coached mobile app plus social networking feature. We hypothesized that those with access to the coached mobile app intervention will have improved ED outcomes in comparison to the control group, and that those with access to the additional social networking feature will have the most improvement in ED symptoms out of all three groups.

Conditions

• Eating Disorders

Interventions

DEVICE

Space From Body and Eating Concerns- Teen

Mobile application with coaching component

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  collaborator NIH

• SilverCloud Health

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Palo Alto University

  collaborator OTHER

• Washington University School of Medicine

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

14 Years

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-12-18

Primary Completion

2022-12-16

Completion

2023-12-18

FDA Device

Yes

Countries

• United States

Study Locations