NCT01280799

Family Treatment for Adolescents With Anorexia Nervosa

Acceptance Based Separated Family Treatment for Adolescents With Anorexia Nervosa

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 1
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 26 (actual)
• Sponsor: Towson University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 12 Years – 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

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.

Detailed description

The purpose of this study is to develop and gather preliminary data on an acceptance-based behavioral treatment for adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN) that is delivered in a separated family format. The treatment will combine a parent's skills curriculum that has demonstrated preliminary effectiveness in the treatment of AN, with a novel adolescent component based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT has been found to be useful in the treatment of an array of psychological difficulties, and may be particularly well-suited for the cognitive and behavioral avoidance and rigidity that characterizes individuals with AN and their caregivers.

Conditions

• Anorexia Nervosa
• Subthreshold Anorexia Nervosa
• Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Primarily Restriction

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Acceptance-based separated family treatment	Family treatment that combines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the adolescent with Parent Skills Training for caregivers. The treatment package is designed to increase willingness to experience difficult thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in order to engage in effective behavior. To facilitate this, caregivers are provided with psychoeducation on eating disorders and skills in behavior management, self-regulation, and emotion regulation.

Timeline

• Start date: 2009-05-01
• Primary completion: 2012-05-01
• First posted: 2011-01-21
• Last updated: 2014-05-19

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: United States