Evaluation of a school‐based programme of universal eating disorders prevention: Is it more effective in girls at risk?

Abstract

There is currently controversy surrounding the effectiveness of universal versus selective prevention in eating disorders (ED). The present study aims at evaluating the effectiveness of universal school-based ED prevention administered to female secondary school students (n = 349). Students received either the full prevention programme (learning basic concepts of nutrition, criticism of aesthetic models of beauty emphasising extreme thinness, media literacy (ML)), a partial version of the programme (without nutritional education), or no prevention programme. Students were also classified on the presence or absence of distinct risk factors for ED: Early menarche, overweight, dieting, negative attitudes to food and perceived pressure to be thin. Pre-test data were collected 1 week prior to implementation of the prevention programme, and post-test data were collected on the last day of the programme. Results suggested that both the full and partial prevention programmes reduced perceived pressure to be thin and improved eating attitudes and knowledge of nutrition in all the participants (regardless of risk); however, greater effect sizes were found among particular high-risk groups (early menarche, overweight and highly influenced by aesthetic models of beauty emphasising extreme thinness). School-based programmes of universal intervention may have an important role to play in the prevention of ED.

Disordered Eating Prevention Programme in Schools: A 30‐Month Follow‐up

“…By using a quasi‐experimental design, 443 adolescents (254 girls and 189 boys) with a mean age of 13.5 years ( SD = 0.4) were assigned to one of three possible experimental conditions: media literacy (ML), media literacy plus nutrition awareness (ML+NUT) or a nontreatment control condition. The current study is based on a previous study involving 13 schools in the city of Terrassa, which were selected by stratified random sampling (Raich et al, ). Terrassa is the fifth largest city in number of inhabitants (200 000) in the autonomous community of Catalonia, one of the most important industrial cities in Spain and a renowned university centre.…”

“…A Spanish team developed an original prevention programme, and after preliminary studies (Raich et al, ; Raich, Portell, & Peláez‐Fernández, ), it was expanded and improved, giving it a more interactive format, increasing the number of sessions and incorporating new activism and media literacy activities. The intervention falls within the theoretical framework of the social cognitive model (Bandura, ) in terms of the reciprocal relationship between the environment and the individual.…”

Real-world effectiveness of a German school-based intervention for primary prevention of anorexia nervosa in preadolescent girls

“…We adopted a universal prevention program to avoid labeling the participating girls who were already suffering from (subclinical) eating disorders or showing specific risk factors. Other universal prevention programs were very effective (Becker et al, 2005;Raich et al, 2009) and primary prevention by definition includes this universal character. Furthermore, our cooperation partners insisted using teachers to implement the project rather than independent professionals on the theory that teachers would improve the program's sustainability.…”

Review of Literature on Media Literacy

“…Media literacy interventions were found to be successful to combat the media’s glamorization of smoking (Primack et al 2009). Also, interventions were found to be successful in helping adolescents and young adults better process the images of models with “perfect” bodies and thus avoid developing eating disorders (Choma et al 2007; Evans et al 2006; Herzog and Eddy 2009; Levine and Murnen 2009; Nathanson and Botta 2003; Richardson et al 2009; Raich et al 2010; Ridolfi and Vander Wal 2008; Wilksch et al 2008; Wilksch and Wade, 2009).…”