NCT06012045

Enhanced Cue Exposure Therapy for Negative Emotional Eating

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Enhanced Cue Exposure Therapy for Negative Emotional Eating

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 138 (estimated)
• Sponsor: The University of Hong Kong · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The current study aims to evaluate the efficacy of Enhanced Cue Exposure Therapy (E-CET) in reducing negative emotional eating (NEE), compared to an active control intervention, behavioral lifestyle intervention (BLI), in a parallel-group, participant-blinded, randomized controlled trial. The secondary aim is to evaluate whether changes in conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) expectancies mediate the changes in NEE.

Detailed description

Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental treatment or control BLI group. Participants in the experimental group will receive 6 weeks of E-CET treatment and those in the control group will receive 6 weeks of behavioral counselling integrating behavioral strategies for making changes related to diet and exercise. Outcomes will be assessed at baseline, posttreatment, and 3- and 12-month follow-ups. Research question 1: Is E-CET an efficacious intervention for reducing NEE? Hypothesis 1: E-CET will lead to greater reductions in NEE at posttreatment and follow-up compared to BLI. Research question 2: Does E-CET work via the violation of the CS-US expectancies? Hypothesis 2: Changes in the believability of CS-US expectancies will mediate the treatment effects of E-CET on NEE.

Conditions

• Disordered Eating Behaviors
• Binge Eating

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Enhanced Cue Exposure Therapy	The E-CET will consist of six weekly sessions and will be delivered by a clinical psychology trainee in person. Session #1 will be used to introduce to the participant the rationale and procedures of E-CET to establish therapeutic alliance, agreement on treatment goals and tasks, and to collect information on idiosyncratic CS-US expectancies to be targeted in exposures. Sessions #2 to #5 will be in vivo exposures. The interventionist will prompt the participant to evaluate the CS-US expectancy to facilitate the violation of the CS-US expectancy maintaining NEE. Between-session homework exposures will be planned and conducted by the participant in their naturalistic environment. They will also be reviewed at the beginning of the following session to consolidate learning. The final session will consist of consolidation of treatment gains and relapse prevention.
BEHAVIORAL	Behavioral Lifestyle Intervention	The BLI will consist of six weekly sessions of behavioral counselling integrating behavioral strategies for participants to make dietary changes. These behavioral strategies will include education about healthy and balanced diets, goal-setting, problem-solving, and relaxation. A manualized protocol developed by the PI's team for previous studies in the local community will be used.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-12-21
• Primary completion: 2025-08-30
• Completion: 2026-03-02
• First posted: 2023-08-25
• Last updated: 2025-04-06

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Hong Kong