Worth Warrior: help body image

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars The Worth Warrior app is a unique app that aims to provide daily help for adolescents ages 12 and up with disordered eating behaviors and body image issues. The app is very aesthetically pleasing and I enjoyed the selection for avatars. However it was disappointing to see that if I chose to have daily motivators on the apps main screen it removes the avatar I chose. The app is designed by Clinical Psychologist Dr. Nihara Krause and utilizes the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Eating Disorders (CBT-E). I found this app to be aesthetically pleasing and customizable, the option to choose your own avatar and color scheme offers a personalized experience for the user and can provide a sense of comfort and familiarity to adolescents using it. This app is incredibly relevant to the lives of adolescents, although not every adolescent will develop an eating disorder, many experience distorted relationships with their bodies and food. (Laser & Nicotera, 2021) While this is extremely prevalent for young girls it is also an issue for young boys, nonbinary and gender non-conforming teens. I find that what is extremely effective about this app is its emphasis on psychoeducation. Psychoeducation as a therapeutic tool is extremely beneficial for all ranges. This is especially true for adolescents struggling with eating disorders as it helps them to better understand their eating disorder behaviors, improve feelings of self efficacy and fosters motivation for change. (Liquori, et. al., 2022) The change in the emotion section in the app is extremely expansive as it offers many self care activities to utilize in difficult moments. This section particularly reminded me of DBT’s opposite action intervention technique due to its emphasis on changing negative and distressing emotions. (Rathus, et. al., 2014). Opposite action can be a very helpful tool for adolescents struggling with disordered eating behaviors as it can help them build new coping skills as well as assist with building distress tolerance. (Pono, 2022) My main concern with this app is particularly to do with its limited ability to monitor and correct what is being said in its “Change the way I view my Body” section. In this section you select different parts of your body that you are feeling particularly insecure or obsessive about. The prompt is to write a statement about this particular part of your body and identify whether it is a fact or a feeling. The issue comes when you write a statement, it can be anything, and the app will agree that you correctly identified a fact. For example, I chose that I was feeling insecure about my neck, I wrote, “My neck is fat” and selected that this statement was a fact. After selecting “fact” I was rewarded with a “well done!” and the option to save this though as a golden thought (the app’s category of positive thoughts). This issue does not occur when you state a thought is a feeling, it will redirect you and ask for you to look at your body in a factual way. I believe this section has so much potential but it currently isn’t effective in what it is trying to achieve. I can see most users feeling discouraged by this and drop the app entirely. The Worth Warrior app shows promising potential for an app that can be beneficial for adolescents to use in conjunction with therapy. The utilization of evidenced based practices and psychoeducation is impressive. It is aesthetically pleasing and can be comforting for users with the use of an avatar and motivating words. However, it has several functionality flaws that need to be addressed in order for this app to be truly helpful to users.