Eating disorders
Work package H1 Eating disorders is led by Ester Espeseth from Helse Fonna to develop treatment and self-help programs for adolescents aged 15-18. She works with clinicians from her own company, PhD candidate Guri Holgersen from Helse Bergen, content developers and a broad reference group from the partners in the project to develop, test and evaluate the digital treatment and self-help intervention.
Eating disorders are a group of serious mental illnesses that consist of four main categories: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and unspecified eating disorder. Central to the various disorders is a cognitive disorder, where the importance of weight, body shape and control is overestimated.
The illnesses often debut at the age of 14-16, a developmental stage where detachment from guardians, establishment of close relationships and education are important. An eating disorder can be long-lasting and is associated with high suffering pressure, significant somatic problems and high mortality.
Despite a high suffering pressure, patients with eating disorders are difficult for the support system to identify and treat. Many patients wait a long time to seek treatment due to great ambivalence to change. The disorders often generate feelings of shame or fear of stigma and social stereotyping, which contributes to creating barriers to treatment.
Only 23% of individuals who meet the criteria for an eating disorder seek treatment. Using digital tools in the treatment of eating disorders can be a way to increase access to health services, reach them earlier and provide as good or better treatment effects than what we have seen so far.
The focus of this work package will be to develop, test and evaluate a digital treatment for eating disorders in adolescents, as well as to develop a self-help version that can be used via www.ung.no. Through a user-centered approach, we will seek to gain sufficient insight into what users want to emphasize in a digital treatment for eating disorders. We therefore include both people with personal experience, therapists in municipal and specialist health services, public health nurses, guardians and others to get input before and during the development. The effect will be tested in a study starting in 2024, before further development and work to make the treatment available to users on ung.no, in the municipality and in the specialist health services.