Online imaginal exposure therapy for eating disorders trial
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Efficacy of Online Imaginal Exposure Therapy for Individuals with Anorexia Nervosa
IRAS ID
328408
Contact name
Lucy Serpell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Z6364106/2023/06/161 , UCL data protection number; 162510, UCL EDGE (Sponsor) number 162510
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 1 days
Research summary
This project will be a trial of online imaginal exposure therapy for individuals with anorexia nervosa. We will sample patients (n=76) from the waiting list for the eating disorder service at the North East London Foundation Trust (for whom the PI, Lucy Serpell, is the clinical lead) and administer a 4-session intervention, previously trialled by Levinson et al. (2019), to target eating disorder fears. The primary aim of the study is to explore the efficacy of the intervention on eating disorder and eating disorder fear symptomology. The secondary aim is to assess the effect of the intervention on BMI/body weight. We will do this by assigning participants to one of two arms, a treatment arm where participants will receive 4 sessions of online exposure therapy, and another where participants will remain on the waiting list with treatment as usual (primarily nurse monitoring). We plan to analyse the data using one-way ANOVAs to compare the two groups.
REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/LO/0146
Date of REC Opinion
2 Apr 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion