Body dysmorphic disorder

Online therapy can help

Internet based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help people affected by body dysmorphic disorder, finds a study published by The BMJ today. This is the largest clinical trial of body dysmorphic disorder ever conducted, and the first to evaluate the effect of an internet based programme for the condition.

Photo: Online therapy can help
Source: panthermedia.net/mark@rocketclips.com

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a common anxiety disorder that causes a person to have a distorted view of how they look and to spend a lot of time worrying about their appearance. If left untreated, it can lead to hospitalisation, substance dependence and suicide.

CBT is an effective treatment, but most affected people do not have access to it. The UK government’s mental health strategy recommends the increased use of information and communication technology to improve care and access to services.

So a team of researchers based in Sweden and the UK set out to evaluate the effectiveness of a therapist guided internet based CBT programme for body dysmorphic disorder (BDD-NET) compared with online supportive therapy.

The study involved 94 adult patients with a diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorder who randomly received either BDD-NET or supportive therapy for 12 weeks.

None of the participants had any face-to-face contact with a therapist during treatment and both groups were followed for 3 months after the end of treatment.

BDD-NET resulted in significant improvements in symptom severity, depression, and quality of life compared with supportive therapy. These gains were maintained for at least three months after the end of treatment.

At that point, 56 percent of those receiving BDD-NET were classed as responders (defined as a 30 percent or more reduction in symptoms on a recognised scoring scale) compared with 13 percent receiving supportive therapy. And 39 percent of those receiving BDD-NET no longer met diagnostic criteria for body dysmorphic disorder.

Participants in the supportive therapy group who crossed over to BDD-NET after six months also improved their symptom scores.

No serious adverse events were reported, and most participants were satisfied with BDD-NET, despite no face to face contact with a therapist, and deemed the treatment as highly acceptable.

Despite some study limitations, the authors say BDD-NET “has the potential to increase access to evidence based psychiatric care for this mental disorder, in line with NICE priority recommendations.”

BDD-NET could be particularly useful in a stepped care approach, they add, “where mild to moderately affected patients can be offered BDD-NET by their general practitioner, or other health professionals, thus freeing resources for more severe and complex patients to be treated in specialised settings.”

Source: The BMJ

03.02.2016

Related articles

Photo

News • Algorithm detects emotional state

AI face detection as support for psychotherapy

A feasibility study by Swiss researchers shows that AI systems are able to reliably predict therapeutic success in patients with borderline personality pathology by detecting emotions on their face.

Photo

News • Out-of-body experience

Virtual reality in therapy: from treating phobias to rehabilitating abusers

In the last few years, virtual reality has become a very significant tool in therapeutic applications, for example, to overcome deep-seated fears or the lack of empathy in abusers.

Photo

News • Predictive psychiatry

Brain imaging finds biomarkers of mental illness

In a new study, researchers use a very large dataset to identify predictive brain imaging-based biomarkers of mental illness in adolescents.

Related products

Subscribe to Newsletter