A study on online intervention for early childhood eating disorders during COVID-19

• Autores: Cimino, Silvia, Almenara, Carlos A., Cerniglia, Luca
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2022
• Institución: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas
• Repositorio: UPC-Institucional
• Lenguaje: inglés
• OAI Identifier: oai:repositorioacademico.upc.edu.pe:10757/659497
• Enlace del recurso: http://hdl.handle.net/10757/659497
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Children; Disordered eating; Online intervention

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. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.