Digital CBTe

What is Digital CBTe and who is it for?

Only a minority of those who could benefit from psychological treatments for eating disorders receive them. Evidence-based therapist-led treatments are under increasingly scarce supply. Widening the reach is possible with a digital solution. In response to this, the Centre for Research on Eating Disorders at Oxford (CREDO) have developed Digital CBTe, a digital self-help form of enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy, with funding from the Wellcome Trust and support for preliminary studies from the the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre 

Digital CBTe is a cognitive-behavioural self-help programme for people with eating disorders who are not underweight and who are experiencing recurrent binge eating. It is a programme-led approach designed to reach people directly via their phones and computers. It is intended for two groups in particular: 

  1. Those in the early stages of an eating disorder. The goal is to help them break out of it before the problem becomes more established.
  2. Those with an established eating disorder who are unable or unwilling to access face-to-face treatment. This can be for a variety of reasons including reluctance to disclose the problem, lack of local treatment resources, waiting lists, cost of treatment, and practical difficulties attending.

Digital CBTe is designed to be an engaging intervention which matches the eating problem of the user.  

Evaluating Digital CBTe

We are seeking volunteers to help us to test Digital CBTe as we need to learn more about its effects. We are also seeking health professionals and services who are interested in Digital CBTe to help us with our research and to pilot Digital CBTe. In both cases please be patient as we may not have availability to participate at this time, but we will keep your details for future research. Please contact us if you are interested: credoenquiries@psych.ox.ac.uk  

Further reading

Fairburn CG, Patel V. (2017) The impact of digital technology on psychological treatments and their dissemination. Behavior Research and Therapy, 88, 19-25.

Fairburn CG, Murphy R. (2015) Treating eating disorders using the internet. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 28, 461-467.