Could digital tools also help combat eating disorders? Johana Monthuy-Blanc, head of the Loricorps research group at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières, is convinced of this. She specializes in working with patients experiencing eating disorders for the first time. “We want to record them from the start, because only one in two people leave the hospital without returning,” she says. His main weapon: digital health.
In 2018, Loricorps launched the Pocket Speaker application, which aims to provide tools for people suffering from or at risk of developing an eating disorder. “This allowed us to propose a research intervention program,” says the researcher. In addition, there is the development of a virtual health tool with the help of which the perception of body image is to be recorded. “We project a body from thinnest to roundest and ask the person to name the person who resembles them and who they would like to resemble. » This is how we determine exactly the underlying problem that influences the intervention method.
The researcher recently joined the research center at the University Mental Health Institute of Montreal, where she hopes to improve the quality of their telehealth interventions. “The problem for people is that they don’t have access to applications,” she notes. It’s about having access to evidence-based tools. » His work will also focus on ignored populations, such as the LGBTQ+ community and people undergoing repeat bariatric surgeries. “Our recent research shows that 48% of Quebec’s population has mild to moderate eating behavior problems,” she notes.