View clinical trials related to Subthreshold Anorexia Nervosa.
Filter by:This treatment development study seeks to investigate the most effective way to treat an adolescent's eating disorder and how best to involve the parents or caregivers in this process. Typically, parents and their child are seen together in therapy. However, this can sometimes be difficult for both the parents and the adolescent. Both parents and adolescents have different concerns and are struggling with different aspects of the eating disorder. Therefore, the treatment in this study involves the parents in treatment, but the majority of therapy sessions are conducted with the parent(s) and adolescent separately. Participants meet with a therapist for 20 sessions over the course of 24 weeks. For the first 16 weeks parents and the adolescent meet individually with the therapist. For the last 8 weeks families meet with the therapist every other week. These last four sessions are conjoint - that is, adolescents and parents will meet with the therapist together. This is to help parents and adolescents come together as a family to continue to aid the adolescent in the treatment of his/her eating disorder. The investigators hypothesize that adolescents who receive this treatment will demonstrate improvement in eating disorder symptoms and body-mass index and that caregivers who participate will demonstrate decreased distress and caregiver burden. Furthermore, the investigators hypothesize that increases in psychological acceptance will be seen for both adolescents and caregivers post-treatment, and that treatment will be viewed as both credible and acceptable to both caregiver and adolescent.
The investigators are trying to learn the most effective way to treat an adolescent's eating disorder and how best to involve the parents or caregivers in this process. Typically, parents and their child are seen together in therapy. However, this can sometimes be difficult for both the parents and the adolescent. Both parents and adolescents have different concerns and are struggling with different aspects of the eating disorder. Therefore, the treatment in this study involves the parents in treatment, but does not have therapy sessions with the parents and child together. The purpose of this study is to develop this investigational type of treatment (separated family treatment), and see what works best for adolescents and their families. Participants meet with a therapist for 20 sessions over the course of 24 weeks. For the first 16 weeks families separate therapy sessions weekly. For the last 8 weeks families meet with the therapist bi-weekly. These bi-weekly sessions are conjoint - that is, adolescents and parents will meet with the therapist together. This is to help parents and adolescents come together as a family to continue to aid the adolescent in the treatment of his/her eating disorder. The investigators hypothesize that adolescents who receive ASFT will demonstrate improvement in eating disorder symptoms and body-mass index, that caregivers who participate in ASFT will demonstrate decreased distress and caregiver burden, that increases in psychological acceptance will be seen for both adolescents and caregivers post-treatment, and that treatment will be viewed as both credible and acceptable to both caregiver and adolescent
While parents are considered essential for the effective treatment of adolescents with anorexia nervosa, the most effective manner to involve parents in treatment is unknown. Given reports of high caregiver burden among parents of this clinical group, finding treatments that minimize parent burden while improving the child's eating disorder symptoms is essential. This investigation will examine the preliminary effectiveness of a parent skills group and adolescent skills group compared to family therapy for the treatment of adolescent anorexia nervosa. The target of this intervention is the improvement of eating disorder symptoms in the child and improving self-efficacy, emotion regulation, and perceived burden in the parent. The effectiveness of this experimental treatment group (Group Parent Training for the parents/Adolescent Skills Training for the adolescent) will be compared to the Maudsley model of family therapy. The effectiveness of the group program will be examined by exploring changes within individuals over time as well as via comparisons across treatment conditions. Results from this investigation will be used to calculate treatment effect sizes in the design of a larger, fully powered, randomized clinical trial.