Can a brief, app-based mindfulness intervention reduce body dissatisfaction?

Introduction: eHealth interventions have been viewed as a means to make treatments for psychological conditions more cost-effective and readily available to the public. In addition to reducing concerns about stigma and lack of anonymity, as well as geographic and cost limits associated with attending services, app- and web-based interventions have the capacity to provide usage data that may provide insight into reasons for (failed) efficacy of a given treatment. This presentation reports on preliminary findings from an ongoing 3-week trial of a brief, online intervention to improve body image in those reporting eating disorder symptoms. It incorporated a series of 3-minute mindfulness-based videos designed to alleviate body dissatisfaction and disordered eating symptoms. Method: In addition to baseline and post-intervention measures of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating symptom severity, participants completed single item measures of body (dis)satisfaction immediately prior to and following viewing videos offered in the intervention. Participants were able to access these video-based activities as often as they liked, and these data therefore allowed evaluation of frequency of use, when participants typically used these videos (as based on pre-video body satisfaction level), and how effective these videos were in alleviating body dissatisfaction in the moment and also from baseline to post-intervention. Results and Conclusion: This presentation will show the impact of frequency and timing of use on participant-level body image and disordered eating symptom outcomes, and will highlight some potential challenges in self-guided intervention, as well as future research directions to help overcome these issues.