Eating Disorders Prevention: An Effectiveness Trial for At-Risk College Students

This three-site effectiveness trial will test whether a brief dissonance-based eating disorder prevention program produces intervention effects when college counselors, psychologists, and nurses are responsible for participant recruitment, screening, and intervention delivery under ecologically valid conditions.

Threshold and subthreshold eating disorders affect over 10% of young women and are associated with functional impairment, distress, psychiatric comorbidity, medical complications, mortality, and risk for obesity onset. Accordingly, a pressing public healthy priority is to develop effective prevention programs for eating pathology. The proposed project will be the first effectiveness trial to test whether an eating disorder prevention program with strong empirical support from efficacy trials produces effects under ecologically valid conditions among high-risk female college students, which is a vital step toward widespread dissemination of programs developed with NIH funding. The proposed cost-effectiveness analyses and examination of process factors that predict larger intervention effects will also represent novel contributions to the literature.

Participants in this condition receive an educational brochure about healthy body image via post-mail.

Participants in this condition attend four 1-hour group meetings (one per week for four consecutive weeks) in which they complete a series of written and verbal exercises intended to increase body satisfaction.

Participants in this intervention attend four 1-hour group meetings (one per week for four consecutive weeks) in which they complete a series of written and verbal exercises intended to increase body satisfaction.

We will test whether the dissonance program intervention effects are mediated by change in thin-ideal internalization

We will test whether certain factors moderate program effects (e.g., initial body dissatisfaction level).

Inclusion Criteria: (1) is a registered student at a participating school, (2) self-reports body image concerns Exclusion Criteria: meets DSM-IV criteria for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating disorder

Stice E, Desjardins CD, Rohde P. Young women who develop anorexia nervosa exhibit a persistently low premorbid body weight on average: A longitudinal investigation of an important etiologic clue. J Psychopathol Clin Sci. 2022 Jul;131(5):479-492. doi: 10.1037/abn0000762. Epub 2022 Jun 2.

Stice E, Desjardins CD, Rohde P, Shaw H. Sequencing of symptom emergence in anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and purging disorder and relations of prodromal symptoms to future onset of these disorders. J Abnorm Psychol. 2021 May;130(4):377-387. doi: 10.1037/abn0000666.

Stice E, Rohde P, Shaw H, Desjardins C. Weight suppression increases odds for future onset of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and purging disorder, but not binge eating disorder. Am J Clin Nutr. 2020 Oct 1;112(4):941-947. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqaa146.