Prevention of eating disorders: recent advances

Only one in five people with eating disorders ever receive care, making effective prevention critical. This review synthesizes prevention trials from the past 2 years - highlighting new interventions and implementation strategies.

A dissonance-based program for Brazilian men reduced muscle dysmorphia and body dissatisfaction, but not eating-disorder symptoms. The Body Advocacy Movement , designed to lessen fatphobia, produced medium declines in weight bias but only small symptom reductions, performing no better than the Body Project . Eat Breathe Thrive, a yoga-based program for female athletes, improved anxiety and interoceptive body trusting but did not reduce eating pathology. Two studies testing the Diabetes Body Project for young women with type 1 diabetes - an open pilot and a multinational randomized trial - produced large, durable reductions in general and diabetes specific symptoms but did not improve glycemic control. An implementation experiment across 63 colleges showed that pairing train-the-trainer workshops with technical assistance and ongoing quality assurance supervision maximized clinical benefit per dollar.

Recent work demonstrates promising population-specific adaptations of dissonance-based programs and underscores that comprehensive implementation support enhances effectiveness. Future work should optimize high-school delivery, boost effect sizes, and verify long-term reductions in future eating disorder onset.