Article Text
Abstract
Introduction Adolescents with type 1 diabetes are at a higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders, particularly eating disorders, compared with their healthy peers. In turn, this increases the risk for sub-optimal glycaemic control and life-threatening diabetes-related complications. Despite these increased risks, standard diabetes care does not routinely provide psychological support to help prevent or reduce mental health risks. There is an urgent need to develop ‘clinically usable’ psychosocial interventions that are acceptable to patients and can be realistically integrated into clinical care. This study aims to examine the feasibility and acceptability of a brief self-compassion intervention for adolescents with type 1 diabetes and disordered eating behaviour.
Methods and analysis This feasibility study will examine the effectiveness of a brief self-compassion intervention, compared with a waitlist control group. Participants aged 12–16 years will be recruited from three diabetes outpatient clinics in Auckland, New Zealand. The brief self-compassion intervention is adapted from the standardised ‘Making Friends with Yourself’ intervention and will be delivered in a group format over two sessions. Apart from examining feasibility and acceptability through the flow of participants through the study and qualitative questions, we will assess changes to disordered eating behaviour (primary outcome), self-care behaviours, diabetes-related distress, self-compassion, stress and glycaemic control (secondary outcomes). Such data will be used to calculate the required sample size for a fully powered randomised controlled trial.
Ethics and dissemination This trial has received ethics approval from the Health and Disability Ethics Committee (research project number A+8467). Study results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
Trial registration number ANZCTR (12619000541101).
- self-compassion
- adolescence
- disordered eating
- type 1 diabetes
- psychosocial interventions
- clinically usable interventions
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Footnotes
Twitter @anna_boggiss
Contributors ALB, PLH and ASS came up with the conception and design of the study. ALB will be recruiting participants and conducting the program sessions. PLH and CJ will provide guidance and assistance with recruitment. KB provided training and consultation during the program development phase and will provide ALB with supervision throughout the sessions. ALB and ASS wrote the manuscript. NSC, PLH, CJ and KB reviewed and edited the manuscript.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.