A pilot randomized controlled trial of telephone-based cognitive behavioural therapy for preoperative bariatric surgery patients

• We compare telephone-based CBT (Tele-CBT) to standard pre-operative care.
• We examine changes in eating psychopathology following Tele-CBT.
• We examine changes in psychosocial functioning following Tele-CBT.
• Tele-CBT improves eating psychopathology and depression more than standard care.
• Tele-CBT improves treatment accessibility for obese bariatric surgery patients.

BackgroundPsychosocial interventions can improve eating behaviours and psychosocial functioning in bariatric surgery candidates. However, those that involve face-to-face sessions are problematic for individuals with severe obesity due to mobility issues and practical barriers.ObjectiveTo examine the efficacy of a pre-operative telephone-based cognitive behavioural therapy (Tele-CBT) intervention versus standard pre-operative care for improving eating psychopathology and psychosocial functioning.MethodsPreoperative bariatric surgery patients (N = 47) were randomly assigned to receive standard preoperative care (n = 24) or 6 sessions of Tele-CBT (n = 23).ResultsRetention was 74.5% at post-intervention. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated that the Tele-CBT group reported significant improvements on the Binge Eating Scale (BES), t (22) = 2.81, p = .01, Emotional Eating Scale (EES), t (22) = 3.44, p = .002, and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), t (22) = 2.71, p = .01, whereas the standard care control group actually reported significant increases on the EES, t (23) = 4.86, p < .001, PHQ-9, t (23) = 2.75, p = .01, and General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), t (23) = 2.93, p = .008 over the same time period.ConclusionsTele-CBT holds promise as a brief intervention for improving eating psychopathology and depression in bariatric surgery candidates.