Food, mood, and attitude: Reducing risk for eating disorders in college women.

Abstract

Food, Mood, and Attitude (FMA) is a CD-ROM prevention program developed to decrease risk for eating disorders in college women. Female 1st-year students (N = 240) were randomly assigned to the intervention (FMA) or control group. Equal numbers of students at risk and of low risk for developing an eating disorder were assigned to each condition. Participants in the FMA condition improved on all measures relative to controls. Significant 3-way interactions (Time x Condition x Risk Status) were found on measures of internalization of sociocultural attitudes about thinness, shape concerns, and weight concerns, indicating that at-risk participants in the intervention group improved to a greater extent than did low-risk participants. At follow-up, significantly fewer women in the FMA group reported overeating and excessive exercise relative to controls.

General and program‐specific moderators of two eating disorder prevention programs

“…First, prior trials have found that effects for eating disorder prevention programs are generally more potent for individuals at elevated risk, including those with initially elevated body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms, and body mass index. [14][15][16] Second, meta-analytic reviews of prevention literatures have indicated that stronger intervention effects emerge from selected programs that target only high-risk individuals than from universal programs that are offered to all participants in a given sampling frame; this pattern of findings has emerged with eating disorder prevention programs, 17 obesity prevention programs, 28 and depression prevention programs. 29 There was also support for several of the hypothesized program-specific moderators.…”

“…Thus, despite some evidence of program-specific moderators, these findings echo the more general finding that individuals at greatest risk show the greatest benefit from eating disorder prevention programs. [14][15][16] The moderation effects for the program-specific factors accounted for between 4 and 13% of the variance in bulimic symptoms.…”

“…Past trials of eating disorder prevention programs have found stronger effects for young women with initial elevations in body dissatisfaction 14 and eating disorder symptoms. 15 We also investigated intervention-specific moderators. We predicted that elevated thin-ideal internalization and underestimation of weight norms for women will mitigate the effects of the dissonance program because these factors identify those who will have to make the greatest attitudinal reductions in thinideal internalization.…”

A pilot intervention to reduce eating disorder risk in Latina women

“…An earlier study (Franko et al, 2005) found that the use of the CD-ROM-based prevention program Food, Mood and Attitude (FMA) significantly decreased risk factors in college women relative to control women who received an attention placebo. In that study, no differences were found between white participants and minority participants; however, the sample size was not large enough to examine the effects for specific ethnic minority groups.…”

Web-based nutrition education for college students: Is it feasible?

“…harm reduction). The results of a randomized, controlled clinical field trial showed that among those college women at highest risk for disordered eating, those who used the Food, Mood, and Attitude CD-ROM had a greater increase in knowledge, a greater decrease in internalization of negative cultural attitudes toward appearance, and a significant reduction in problem eating behaviors, including weight and shape concerns, than high risk women in the control group (Franko et al, 2005). This suggests that developing computer-based health programming grounded in multiple but relevant behavioral theories is likely a key factor in program success.…”