Strategies for integrating evidence-based digital services into the treatment of eating disorders

Summary

Aim and concept

Patients with eating disorder often suffer from an early onset of their disease in adolescence or early adulthood. Many patients wait long until they seek professional help due to a lack of experts available nearby. On the other hand, they often need high efforts to seek help. This is aggravated by the fact that there are long waiting times for a suitable therapy place.

Digital offers such as video or chat-based psychotherapy or internet-based self-help programs offer the opportunity to ensure more continuity in care and to supplement existing offers. Despite positive scientific results, they have so far hardly been used for eating disorders by experts in Germany.

The SIDA-ESS project aims to investigate factors that facilitate or prevent the integration of digital offers in the German healthcare system for eating disorders. For this purpose, interviews are first conducted with therapists. At the same time, representatives of various professional groups will be surveyed quantitatively. In the next step, a digital toolkit will be developed that is intended to promote the willingness of practitioners to include digital offers in their care. This toolkit will be evaluated in a final stage of the project.

The results of the study serve to offer practical implementation suggestions and concepts for which symptom profile and at which points of care digital offers for eating disorders can serve as a beneficial supplement the existing care.

For further information please follow the link (German).

For further information please follow the link (German).