Acceptance Processes clinical trials

ACT to Prevent Eating Disorders: Evaluating a Gamified Prevention Program

Eating Disorders (ED) constitute a serious public health issue that affects predominantly women and appears typically in adolescence or early adulthood. ED are extremely difficult to treat as these disorders are ego-syntonic and many patients do not seek treatment. As ED are associated with significant adverse medical and psychological consequences, it is vital to focus on the development of successful prevention programs. Even though, in the last two decades significant steps have been made over the development of efficacious and effective ED prevention programs, there is room for improvement in regards to effect sizes. Prevention programs for ED to date have focussed on either reducing the pursuit of the thin ideal or on disputing and replacing unrealistic thoughts with regard to food, body and weigh. There is a growing body of evidence supporting the functional relationship between ED symptomatology and control of emotional states either by avoiding or inhibiting emotional responses. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of a digital Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) based prevention program in comparison to a wait-list control group for young women identified to be at risk for ED. The goals of the study were to describe the development of the AcceptME protocol and digitalized program, assess participants' feedback and the acceptability of the program, and examine the effectiveness of the ACT-based prevention program compared to a wait-list control group. This prevention program has several innovations: a) it is based on ACT theory and practices; b) it uses gamification principles to create a program appealing to adolescents; c) it targets behaviour change in individuals via helping a digital character overcome difficulties in the digitalized program.