ArticlePilot and feasibility studies2025
Shortening duration of untreated illness in young people with first episode eating disorders: protocol of a randomised controlled feasibility trial of a smartphone friendly multi-modal decision-making tool (FREED-M) to improve help-seeking.
Article in Pilot and feasibility studies, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Duration of Untreated Eating Disorder and Prodrome in Young People: Characteristics and Relationship to Early Outcomes.Early intervention in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Learning From Those Who Have Lived: A Scoping Review Exploring the Involvement of Lived Experience Co-Design in Eating Disorder Research Methodologies.The International journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- "Early intervention isn't an option, it's a necessity": learning from implementation facilitators and challenges from the rapid scaling of an early intervention eating disorders programme in England.Frontiers in health services · 2023Article
- A Narrative Review of Early Intervention for Eating Disorders: Barriers and Facilitators.Adolescent health, medicine and therapeutics · 2023Review
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEarly intervention gives young people the best chance to recover from eating disorders (EDs). An important focus of early intervention is shortening the time between a person first developing symptoms and starting treatment (duration of untreated eating disorder; DUED). Patient-related factors (e.g. poor mental health literacy and help-seeking difficulties) are strongly associated with DUED. The aims of our study are to co-design and test the feasibility of FREED-Mobile (FREED-M), an online intervention tool for young people with early-stage EDs. This tool aims to improve knowledge about EDs, increase motivation to seek treatment and teach early steps towards change or recovery, thus reducing DUED.
methodsWe will carry out a randomised controlled feasibility trial comparing the FREED-M tool with a control intervention where individuals are sign-posted to an ED charity website. The objectives of the proposed trial are to establish/estimate: (a) attrition rates at follow-up (primary feasibility outcome); (b) participant recruitment; (c) intervention uptake, completion rates and acceptability; (d) intervention effect sizes and standard deviations for outcomes to inform the sample size calculation for a large-scale randomised controlled trial (RCT); (e) stakeholder views on the intervention. We aim to recruit 116 participants (young people, aged 16-25, with first episode ED) from primary care, schools and universities, ED services and social media. Online assessments will be carried out at baseline, end of intervention and follow-up (weeks 0, 4 and 12 post-randomisation, respectively). Outcomes will include motivation and readiness to change, attitudes and intentions towards help-seeking, ED symptoms, mood and social functioning, and health-related quality of life. Additionally, we will carry out a qualitative evaluation of participants' views of the intervention and study design. DISCUSSION: The results of this feasibility trial will inform adaptations to the intervention as needed, as well as the study design (e.g. sample size, primary outcomes) of a future large-scale RCT to assess the effectiveness of the FREED-M intervention. If effective, this novel, online intervention has the potential for wide dissemination and for substantially reducing DUED to improve long-term patient outcomes.
trial registrationISRCTN, ISRCTN15662055. Registered 27 July 2022, https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN15662055 .
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