Healthier and earlier through digital technology

This project focus on sleep and eating disorders, which are highly prevalent among adolescents, often co-occur, and are associated with many significant comorbidities and functional impairment. Sleep and eating disorders share common maintaining factors, including negative affect, functional impairment and increased reactivity to disease-related stimuli. The project will use a transdiagnostic staging model to produce new knowledge about the mechanisms underlying the transition from prodromal symptoms to full-blown syndromes in adolescence. A longitudinal and multimodal approach to data collection will be used to examine the predictive risk of psychological factors implicated in the onset and maintenance of eating and/or sleep disorders.

Individuals at high-risk for, or with clinical symptoms of eating and/or sleep disorders will be identified through agile online surveys and will be referred early to online resources for self-care. A putative and promising transdiagnostic mechanism for the development of eating and/or sleep disorders, i.e., increased reactivity to disease-related stimuli, will be tested using virtual reality, an inclusive, affordable and engaging technology. A pilot study will be embedded in this project to test the acceptability, feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a virtual reality self-guided intervention to improve emotion regulation towards disease-related stimuli and remediate eating and/or sleep problems in adolescence.

The feasibility of the project is demonstrated by its deep rooting in studies
previously conducted by the research team, by their documented and integrated expertise in the fields of eating disorders, sleep disorders, experimental research, and analysis of big data, and by their national and international network of collaborations, which will inform the refinement of the project’s goals and methods throughout, and which will ensure that findings are disseminated widely to the relevant stakeholders.