Clinical trial
Group Skills Training for Body Awareness and Managing Emotions
Opening soon · Not applicable · 1 countries · Registry ID NCT07315763
What this study is about
The goal of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a skills training group informed by polyvagal theory, when delivered in an NHS setting, for those living with obesity. Polyvagal Theory in Therapy encourages individuals to be curious, respect how their nervous system works, and notice and respond to bodily sensations. Research shows that interoception, which is the ability to sense and understand what is happening inside the body such as recognising hunger, pain, or emotions, may be challenging for people in larger bodies. These challenges have been connected to difficulties in managing emotions which may lead to behaviours such as emotional eating. This points to the need for a therapeutic approach that helps people both notice what's happening in their bodies and trust those signals enough to be able to respond in healthy ways. This project will test whether a novel polyvagal informed skills training group can improve body awareness (interoception) and emotional regulation for people within an NHS specialist weight management service using a single case experimental design. Participants will be randomly assigned a baseline period of either 14 or 21 (phase A of the design) using computer-generated randomisation. During this phase, participants will complete outcome measures. The skills training intervention phase (phase B) will begin immediately following the individual's baseline period. The intervention is the six session group polyvagal theory-informed skills training. A four-week follow-up period will follow the skills training group, during which participants will continue to complete the same outcome measures they had used in the first two phases. This phase will help assess whether immediate treatment gains are maintained and/or whether delayed treatment gains occur. Trend analysis within this phase will show whether improvement or decline occurs post-skills training.
Basic eligibility
Full registry criteria
Treatments and study arms
Polyvagal informed skills training group
Research has found a connection between obesity and challenges in managing emotions, including emotional eating (Fernandes et al., 2018; Willem et al., 2019; Konttinen et al., 2019). There is currently a lack of treatments designed to address these issues whilst also promoting a curious and accepting relationship with the body. This may be particularly important for this group who may have a history of dieting or experience internalised stigma which can create a disconnect between the person and their body, a factor that many existing approaches fail to address, even though it is known to negatively impact health (Puhl et al., 2020). This study aligns with recent shifts in health policy, which move away from focusing solely on weight loss and instead prioritise non-weight-related health outcomes (Hunger et al., 2020). This group skills training, based on Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 1995), is designed to meet these needs.
Primary outcomes
To be completed once per day. Includes three questions asking participants about their body awareness, taking care of body shifts and the frequency of a chosen behaviour. The questions are 'Over the last 24 hours, how many times were you able to recognise shifts in your body?' , 'Over the last 24 hours, how many times did you take care of the shifts in your body? ' and 'Over the last 24 hours, how many times have you engaged in your chosen behaviour?' to rate on a scale of 0-20.
Study locations
1 locations were listed when this page was built. The first 40 are shown.