A Study on Online Intervention for Early Childhood Eating Disorders during COVID-19

Silvia Cimino, Carlos A. Almenara and Luca Cerniglia
Additional contact information
Silvia Cimino: Department of Dynamic, Clinical, and Health Psychology, Sapienza, University of Rome, Via Degli Apuli, 1, 00186 Rome, Italy
Carlos A. Almenara: Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Av. Alameda San Marcos, Lima 11-15067, Peru
Luca Cerniglia: Faculty of Psychology, International Telematic University Uninettuno, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39, 00186 Rome, Italy

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 6, 1-10

Abstract: Eating disorders are among the most common clinical manifestations in children, and they are frequently connected with maternal psychopathological risk, internalizing/externalizing problems in children, and poor quality of mother–child feeding exchanges. During the COVID-19 lockdown, in person assessment and intervention were impeded due to the indications of maintaining interpersonal distancing and by limits to travel. Therefore, web-based methods were adopted to meet patients’ needs. In this study N = 278 participants completed the SCL-90/R and the CBCL to examine the psychopathological symptoms of mothers and children (age of the children = 24 months); moreover, the dyads were video-recorded during feeding and followed an online video-feedback based intervention. Maternal emotional state, interactive conflict, food refusal in children, and dyadic affective state all improved considerably, as did offspring internalizing/externalizing problems and mothers’ depression, anxiety, and obsession–compulsion symptoms. This study showed that video-feedback web-based intervention might be employed successfully to yield considerable beneficial effects.

Keywords: children; disordered eating; online intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/6/3696/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/6/3696/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:6:p:3696-:d:775391

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().