effectiveness of a school-based body image intervention on eating problems and self-esteem in female adolescents with eating disorders

Social media can cause body dissatisfaction by presenting social ideals about appearance. this dissatisfaction can lead to eating problems and low self-esteem, which is frequently seen in adolescents. therefore, intervention in this situation can be valuable for research and treatment purposes. the present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the school-based intervention “dove confident me” on eating problems and self-esteem in female adolescents with eating disorders. this quasi-experimental research was performed using a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. the statistical population of the research included all female high school students in bandar abbas (iran) in 2021. a total of 47 female students were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned to experimental (23 people) and control (24 people) groups. eating disorder diagnostic scale (edds) and rosenberg self-esteem scale (rses) were used to collect data. research hypotheses were tested using multivariate covariance analysis (mancova). the results indicated that the school-based intervention “dove confident me” had a significant effect on the improvement of symptoms of eating disorders (f = 6.41, p < 0.05) and self-esteem (f = 5.35, p < 0.05) in female adolescents with eating disorders. according to the findings, the “dove confident me” intervention can improve eating problems and self-esteem of female adolescents with eating disorders by correcting social ideals about appearance and improving media literacy. furthermore, it can be applied as an effective treatment and training method.