gms | German Medical Science

Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a condition with serious medical complications, severe comorbid psychological conditions, high mortality rates and poor treatment outcome. Contrary to women with subthreshold bulimic symptoms, restrictive eaters do not benefit from existing (indicated) prevention programs for subthreshold eating disorders. Moreover, underweight women have not been included in previous prevention trials. Targeted interventions, specifically tailored for women at risk for AN are therefore still lacking.

Material/Methods: 36 women with high weight concerns, low BMI and/or high restrained eating participated in a 10 week Internet-based cognitive-behavioral prevention program for women at risk for AN. Feasibility, acceptance and compliance of the program as well as attitudes and subthreshold symptoms of disordered eating and associated psychopathology were assessed in a pilot study.

Results: Recruitment and inclusion of women at-risk for AN is possible. Acceptance of and compliance with the program were good. Core attitudes and subthreshold symptoms of disordered eating were significantly reduced between pre- and post-intervention as well as between pre-intervention and 6-months follow-up with mainly medium to large effects. In addition associated psychopathology improved considerably.

Discussion: The results indicate that targeted prevention for women at risk for AN can reduce risk factors and subthreshold symptoms of the disorder. The efficacy of the intervention will be examined in a subsequent randomized controlled trial.