Using Technology to Improve Eating Disorders Treatment

Colleges are faced with an elevated prevalence of eating disorders, yet less than 20% of students report receiving treatment. Inadequacies in mental health care delivery result in prolonged illness, disease progression, poorer prognosis, and greater likelihood of relapse, highlighting the need for improved modalities for screening and intervention. Over the past 20 years, we have developed a comprehensive, online platform through which we identify and offer tailored evidence-based interventions to individuals across the eating disorder risk and diagnostic spectrum, using minimal person-based resources. The newest intervention in our suite of programs, Student Bodies-Eating Disorders (SB-ED), has not yet been tested in a large-scale trial or via platform delivery. The aim of this study is to conduct the first national deployment of our comprehensive platform and demonstrate that our transdiagnostic guided self-help program, SB-ED, yields measurable and significant improvements in access, costs, and outcomes for eating disorder treatment over referral to usual care (i.e., treatment per protocol at students' corresponding college's mental health services center).

Twenty-eight colleges will be randomly assigned to receive either SB-ED or referral to usual care. We will enroll at least 650 students from these campuses who screen positive for a DSM-5 clinical or subclinical eating disorder (excluding anorexia nervosa, which warrants more intensive medical monitoring). Outcomes will be measured at 6-months, 1-year, and 2-years following the completion of the online screen.