Adolescent Weight Control: An Intervention Targeting Parent Communication and Modeling Compared With Minimal Parental Involvement

Abstract

Contrary to hypotheses, targeting parent-adolescent communication and parental modeling did not lead to better outcomes in adolescent weight control.

Behavioral intervention in the treatment of obesity in children and adolescents: implications for Mexico

“…In 1 recent study, adolescents were randomly assigned to an enhanced treatment condition that included standard behavioral weight control combined with targeted parent-adolescent communication and parental modeling of healthy behaviors or a standard behavioral intervention with minimal parental involvement. 31 Contrary to expectation, the results revealed a trend for adolescents randomized to the condition with minimal parent involvement to demonstrate greater decrease in BMI than those who received the enhanced condition. One potential explanation for this finding is that parental modeling of healthy eating and activity behaviors, considered to be a key factor in supporting weight loss in children, is less salient for adolescents.…”

A systematic review of community‐based interventions for the treatment of adolescents with overweight and obesity

“…where effect size was greatest partway through the program at 3 months (6%), reduced at 6 months (4%) and remained stable at 12 months (4%) . Seven programs, ranging in length from 6 weeks to 4 months, reported BMI as an outcome measure and had smaller effect sizes which ranged from 1% to 7% . Two of these programs reported BMI after a period of follow‐up, with the direction of the effect increasing (from 3% at 6 weeks to 4% at 10 weeks ) for one program and decreasing (from 5 to 6% at 4 months to 3–5% at 12 months and 0–2% at 24 months) for the other ).…”

“…Study, program and participant characteristics are reported in Table . Half of the programs were from the United States (US; n = 11) with the remainder from Europe ( n = 7) , Australia ( n = 2) and the United Kingdom (UK; n = 1) . The programs were evaluated as controlled trials ( n = 15), both randomized ( n = 10) and non‐randomized ( n = 5) , and as pre–post case series ( n = 6) .…”

“…Study quality was assessed to be weak for five programs ; moderate for eight ; and strong for eight . More than half of the programs were rated as being weak for selection bias ( n = 11) , as they involved self‐referrals from community advertisements and public service announcements, as is commonplace for community interventions, and thus participants were not selected at random from the eligible population.…”

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Plus Healthy Lifestyle Enhancement for Depressed, Overweight/Obese Adolescents: Results of a Pilot Trial

“…In addition, the CBT-HL protocol included specific content on Body Image and Coping with Food Cravings (Jelalian et al, 2015). A nutritionist was available to meet with the teen individually up to four times.…”