Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: May 3, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 23, 2024 - Jul 29, 2024
Date Accepted: Sep 13, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Effectiveness of online psychoeducational and online self-help platforms for eating disorders: Protocol for a systematic review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Access to psychological healthcare is extremely difficult, especially for individuals suffering from severely stigmatised disorders such as eating disorders (ED). There has been an increase in children, adolescents, and adults suffering from ED symptoms and ED, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. Online self-help platforms allow people to bridge the treatment gap and receive support when in-person treatment is unavailable or not preferred. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first systematic review evaluating the efficacy of solely online self-help platforms.
Objective:
The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the effectiveness of online self-help platforms for EDs
Methods:
The proposed systematic review will follow the guidelines for the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). The review has been registered to PROSPERO with the registration number: CRD42024520866. This review will report and evaluate the literature concerning the efficacy of self-help platforms for EDs. Two independent authors will utilise the search terms to conduct the initial search. The collated articles will then be screened by their titles and abstracts, and finally, full-text screenings will be conducted. The results will be discussed, and the final report will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Data extraction will be conducted and included studies will undergo narrative synthesis.
Results:
The authors conducted a database search for articles that were published by the 31st of May 2024. Fourteen studies were included in the systematic review. Data charting will be completed on excel and data synthesis will be completed, and the result is expected to be published by the end of 2024. Overall, the systematic review found that online self-help platforms are effective in reducing global ED psychopathology and ED-related behaviours.
Conclusions:
Self-help platforms are helpful first-stage resources in a tiered healthcare system. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO (CRD42024520866)
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.