Teen Obesity and Weight Management
Parents, Schools and Healthcare Providers
Helping Teens COPE with Stress and Anxiety Related to Weight Management
Anxiety, stress and depression are all emotions associated with obesity. Our self-delivered 7-Session Teen Online Program is designed to help teens cope with stress and anxiety related to the social challenges associated with personal weight management. Our COPE TEEN 15-Session Manual-based Program is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-based (CBT)-based intervention that can be integrated into a student’s health course or taught in group and individual sessions in primary care or specialty care settings. The program is designed to help teens who are overweight and also have low self-esteem as well as heightened depressive and anxiety symptoms develop the skills needed to stop negative thoughts and start thinking and behaving in more positive ways.
Parents:
COPE 7-Session Teen Online
The COPE 7-session Teen Online program was designed to educate teens (13 - 18 yrs old) dealing with anxiety, stress and depression by showing them how to develop the skills needed to stop negative thoughts and start thinking and behaving in more positive ways.
Thoughtfully designed graphics and easy-to-follow narration illustrate key points in each of the seven 20- to 30-minute sessions, and teens are encouraged to try out the principles presented and write down their own thoughts and reactions using the interactive component.
Each session takes only about 20- to 30-minutes per week for seven weeks (2.5 - 3.5 hours to complete the entire 7-session program) and each session can be reviewed as many times as desired during the year-long subscription to reinforce the concepts.
The online, self-administered 7-session program is a self-help, cognitive-behavioral skills-building intervention educational program only and is not meant to diagnose or provide treatment for a particular disease or illness. The goal of this educational program is to teach children and teens how to recognize negative thought patterns, and provide cognitive behavioral skills and techniques that can be useful in modifying negative thinking.
Schools and Healthcare Providers:
15-Session Healthy Lifestyles TEEN Manual-Based Program
National Cancer Institute's Research Tested Interventions Program - COPE 15-Session TEEN Program
After rigorous review, the COPE Healthy Lifestyles TEEN program (see below) has been selected for inclusion in the National Cancer Institute's Research Tested Interventions Program initiative as an obesity/cancer control intervention (see http://rtips.cancer.gov/rtips/programDetails.do?programId=22686590).
Findings at six and 12 months following the intervention from the clinical trial that tested the COPE TEEN program with 779 high school teens indicated that teens who received COPE versus an attention control program had significantly higher physical activity, higher social skills, higher academic competence and grades, less alcohol use and less overweight/obesity.
Further, teens with severe depressive symptoms at baseline had symptoms in the normal range 12 months after the intervention compared to attention control teens whose symptoms remained elevated (see article of finding in Journal of School Health http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josh.12342/abstract).
COPE 15-Session TEEN Program - Student Manual Cover Page
This manual-based 15-Session cognitive-behavioral skills building (CBSB) healthy lifestyle intervention program is designed for teens (13 to 18 year old) and builds upon the skills learned in the 7-Session Program by including sessions on healthy nutrition and physical activity. The program is designed to be integrated into a student’s health course or taught in group and individual sessions in primary care or specialty care settings.
This evidence-based 15-session program can be delivered by teachers, nurses, doctors, psychologists, counselors, and social workers who have completed our 7-Session Program Online Instructors Training, plus an additional one-hour phone-based consultation for the eight Healthy Nutrition and Physical Activity Modules (included in the program package purchase), and completed a Practice Training Session.
Since many teens who are overweight also have low self-esteem as well as heightened depressive and anxiety symptoms, a key innovation in the COPE TEEN (Thinking, Emotions, Exercise, and Nutrition) program is the CBSB, which teaches teens that how they think directly impacts how they feel and how they behave.
“The material is so well presented - and I have been doing this a long, long time - another client said: Leslie is just like me! I feel fat and ugly! That’s why I’m here.”