Mini Workshop 16 - Network-informed Personalized Treatment for Eating Disorders

Eating disorders (EDs) are deadly psychiatric disorders (Deloitte, 2020). Evidence-based treatments for EDs result in remission for under 50% of individuals, and no evidence-based treatments exist for adults with anorexia nervosa (Kaidesoja et al., 2023). Further, ~50% of those with EDs relapse within months of discharge. Further, there is high heterogeneity among EDs, even between individuals with the same diagnosis, which may limit the effectiveness of current gold-standard ED treatments that use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach (Levinson et al., 2018). Transdiagnostic Network-informed Personalized Treatment for EDs (T-NIPT-ED) seeks to address the issue of heterogeneity in symptoms and treatment response by personalizing treatment using idiographic (i.e., N=1) network analysis (Levinson et al., 2021). T-NIPT-ED takes a cognitive-behavioral theoretical approach to address a wide variety of symptoms including co-occurring disorders using symptom-specific interventions. T-NIPT-ED leads to decreases in ED symptom severity, related pathology (e.g., worry, depression) and clinical impairment at posttreatment and one-year follow-up (Levinson et al., 2023). To disseminate T-NIPT-ED widely with clinicians, we developed the Awaken Digital Guide, a companion digital mobile application that securely collects and identifies personalized treatment targets and matching evidence-based treatments delivered in a clinician-friendly and easy-to-use manner. In this workshop, we will present findings from a randomized controlled trial of T-NIPT-ED vs. CBT-E and from a mixed-methods pilot of the Awaken Digital Guide. We will discuss feasibility, useability, and acceptability results from ED-specialized therapist-patient pairs who tested the new therapeutic. Finally, we will discuss development of a self-guided version of this therapeutic. Attendees will gain foundational knowledge of T-NIPT-ED through lecture, demonstrations, and group-based learning activities. Clinician-facing software for calculating idiographic networks and selecting treatment targets in clinical practice will be demonstrated. Attendees will leave confident in their ability to implement T-NIPT-ED and the Awaken Digital Guide in their clinical practice.

Outline:
Dr. Levinson will first present the research for personalizing treatment and using transdiagnostic Network-informed Personalized Treatment for EDs (T-NIPT-ED).
Dr. Ralph-Nearman will then demonstrate packaging T-NIPT-ED into a digital therapeutic and research using the Awaken Digital Guide.
Dr. Butler will provide an interactive training with treatment selections, which address some of the most common symptoms within the EAT Lab research.