A Body Dissatisfaction Internet Intervention On Young Women

Body dissatisfaction is defined as negative and subjective evaluation of one’s physical body and the resulting of unpleasant emotional experience. In modern society, body dissatisfaction, especially the female body dissatisfaction is a common phenomenon. The dissatisfaction with the size and weight in women are even reach 86.9%(Mond et al.,2013). In response to this phenomenon, researchers used a professional word Namative Discontent to describe the high incidence of body dissatisfaction. 42% of adolescents in China express some level of body dissatisfaction. And physical self satisfaction decreased with the increase of age, the most unsatisfactory grade appearing at the university stage.At present, young women are facing invisible “be thinner” pressures, which come from the social and cultural factors(such as the media, peer and family). Body dissatisfaction has become women’s major problem in the physical and mental health at present. The physical and mental problems such as depression, social anxiety, dieting and eating disorders that caused by the body’s dissatisfaction are prominent. Body dissatisfaction intervention in young women has no time to delay.Body dissatisfaction intervention is a hot research topic abroad. In recent years, researchers have begun to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy(Pearson et al.,2012)and self-compassion meditation(Albertson et al.,2014)to intervene body dissatisfaction. Newly developed interactive intervention program In Favor of Myself was delivered by teachers and integrated into a regular school coping skills curriculum(Golan, Hagay, & Tamir, 2013). Researchers have proposed gender-adapted intervention program(Weigel et al., 2015), and even allowed parents to participate in the intervention(Hart, Chelsea, Damiano& Paxton,2015). Proposed by the 20 th century, the Dissonance-based intervention has proved to be the most effective intervention for the girls above 14 years old, the effect can last for 3 years(Stice, Rohde, Shaw, & Gau, 2011).Since the development of network technology, more and more intervention delivered through the Internet. Especially the younger generation is more willing to spend more time on the Internet. Currently online body dissatisfaction intervention has made good results, such as the most widely use intervention Student Bodies. 8 weeks intervention effectively reduce the risk factor of eating disorders(including body dissatisfaction), and has been verified in several countries with different samples(Beintner, Jacobi, &Taylor,2012). Ebody which developed by Stice et al.(2012) is an Internet intervention based on the Dissonance-based intervention and has been preliminarily verified(Stice, Rohde, Durant,&Shaw,2012; Stice, Durant, Rohde,& Shaw, 2014).Body dissatisfaction Internet intervention can not only solve the leader professional experience and time problem in face-to-face intervention, which makes the organization and implementation become convenient, but can also carry out large-scale intervention, which reduces the cost. The most important point is that the anonymity of the Internet intervention can reduce barriers to seeking psychological help, such as the sense of shame in participants. Especially compared with western culture, when facing with psychological problems, people in the East(including China) is more negative in seeking professional help, which makes the widespread intervention particularly important in Chinese cultural background. But at present, researches on body dissatisfaction intervention in China are scarce and there is no Internet body dissatisfaction intervention in our country.For the lack of previous studies and the importance of body dissatisfaction intervention, I summarized foreign body dissatisfaction intervention researches, and selected the Ebody intervention as the research object. For the first time to investigate the intervention effect of the Chinese version Ebody body dissatisfaction intervention in young women. Study 1 Chinesized Ebody intervention project and developed a new Chinese version of Ebody intervention project. Study 2 based on study 1 and used the Chinese version of Ebody intervention to intervene young female college students(33 people),and compared with educational brochure group(29 people) and assessmentonly control group(31 people).All young female college students in this study orally reported body dissatisfaction. In study 3, subjects in the Ebody intervention group and control group were exposed to thin ideal pictures or pictures of media advertising products, to explore whether the Ebody intervention can effectively help young women to resist the negative impact from the media thin ideal information, and detect the effect of the Ebody intervention in a month follow-up.This study is the first to make the Chinese version of Ebody intervention and for the first time to investigate the intervention effect in the context of Chinese culture. The characteristics of this intervention project are as follows: First, the core concept of intervention is based on the cognitive dissonance theory, critique the thin ideal in verbal, written, and behavioral exercises, these activities theoretically cause cognitive dissonance that motivates participants to reduce pursuit of the thin-ideal, and ultimately achieve the goal to reduce body dissatisfaction; Second, the intervention is based on community interaction, female target population shares and communicates in the open network community interactive platform; Third, the intervention is interesting. An educational game is added to each intervention unit in the Chinese version of Ebody intervention, which not only increases the interest of online intervention, but also increases the length of intervention and enhances the effectiveness of intervention; Fourth, Ebody intervention has been initially verified abroad, as a Sino foreign cooperation project, the Chinese version of Ebody intervention is international.The conclusions of these studies are as follows: No matter Compared with the control group or the educational brochure group, Ebody intervention can significantly reduced the young women’s thin ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction. The Chinese version of the Ebody intervention is feasible in the context of Chinese culture. The Ebody intervention effect still exists after a month later, it can effectively resist the negative from thin ideal media. We may say that the Chinese version of the Ebody intervention is an effective body dissatisfaction intervention.