An interventional study of Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress in Emotional Eating and Emotional Distress, sponsored by Xinghua Liu. Not yet recruiting at 1 site in China. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 65 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-11-12.
Sponsored by Xinghua Liu · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment
The goal of this randomized waitlist-controlled trial is to evaluate whether an online Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress (MIED) can reduce self-reported emotional eating in Chinese adults. Emotional eating in this study refers to the urge or tendency to eat in response to negative emotions, such as anxiety, sadness, loneliness, or stress. The program teaches mindfulness and psychological skills for responding more flexibly to difficult emotions and urges.
The main questions this study aims to answer are:
Can online MIED reduce self-reported emotional eating compared with a waitlist control?
Can online MIED reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms and increase mindfulness?
The study will also examine course attendance, digital practice participation, acceptability, and adverse experiences.
An estimated 108 participants will be randomly assigned in equal numbers to receive online MIED immediately or to a waitlist control group. Researchers will compare questionnaire scores between the groups across the scheduled assessments. The waitlist group will be offered the same program after completion of the comparison follow-up assessments.
Participants will:
Complete eligibility screening, provide informed consent, and complete baseline assessments before random assignment.
Be randomly assigned to the intervention group or the waitlist group.
If assigned to intervention group, attend eight weekly online group sessions, approximately two hours each, and complete 49 days of self-help learning and practice through the iMIED WeChat mini-program, approximately 15-30 minutes daily.
Complete online questionnaires before the intervention, at Weeks 2 and 4, at program completion, and one month after the post-program assessment. Both groups will follow the same assessment schedule, referenced to the intervention group.
Provide feedback on participation, course experiences, and any adverse experiences. A subset of participants will be invited to interviews about their learning experiences and the relevance of the program to emotional eating.
41 studies on the registry are indexed under Emotional Eating; 13 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 108 is above the median of 72 across 34 interventional studies indexed under Emotional Eating.
Browse Emotional Eating studies →Xinghua Liu is the lead sponsor of 7 studies on the registry; 5 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria:
Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Informed consent
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Participants will receive eight weekly online MIED group sessions, approximately two hours per session, together with a 49-day iMIED self-help mindfulness course via WeChat mini-program. The intervention includes mindfulness practice and psychological education and is grounded in the psychopathological diamond model of emotional distress proposed by Liu and colleagues.
Behavioral: Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress
Participants will not receive mindfulness intervention during the comparison period. They will complete questionnaires on the same assessment schedule as the MIED group. After the one-month post-program comparison follow-up has been completed, they will be offered the same MIED group course and iMIED learning and practice program.
A combined online group and digitally supported mindfulness program incorporating guided audio practice, educational materials, between-session exercises, reminders, and assistant support. The eight session themes are mindfulness and engagement in life; understanding emotions; sources of emotional distress and responses; distress tolerance; emotion-driven behaviors; cognitive flexibility; gradually approaching difficult situations; and maintaining practice after the course.
Chinese 11-Item DEBQ Emotional Eating Subscale
Self-reported emotional eating will be assessed using the Chinese 11-item emotional eating subscale of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ-EE). Items are rated from 1 (lowest frequency) to 5 (highest frequency), using the validated Chinese response wording. The outcome score is the mean of the 11 item scores, ranging from 1 to 5; higher scores indicate more frequent negative emotion-related urges or tendencies to eat.
Time frame: Baseline, 2 and 4 weeks after scheduled MIED program start, at the end of the 8-week MIED program (after the eighth scheduled session), and 1 month after scheduled program completion. Both groups follow the same schedule.
Overall Anxiety Severity and Impairment Scale (OASIS)
The OASIS is a 5-item self-report measure designed to assess the frequency and severity of anxiety symptoms, as well as the extent of anxiety-related functional impairment and avoidance, over the past week. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale from 0 to 4, with total scores ranging from 0 to 20. Higher scores indicate greater overall anxiety severity and impairment. The OASIS has demonstrated good reliability and validity in both clinical and nonclinical samples (Norman et al., 2006).
Time frame: Baseline, 2 and 4 weeks after scheduled MIED program start, at the end of the 8-week MIED program (after the eighth scheduled session), and 1 month after scheduled program completion. Both groups follow the same schedule.
Overall Depression Severity and Impairment Scale (ODSIS)
The ODSIS is a 5-item self-report measure designed to assess the frequency and severity of depressive symptoms, as well as depression-related functional impairment and avoidance, over the past week. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale from 0 to 4, with total scores ranging from 0 to 20. Higher scores indicate greater overall depression severity and impairment. The ODSIS has demonstrated good reliability and validity in both clinical and nonclinical samples (Bentley et al., 2014).
Time frame: Baseline, 2 and 4 weeks after scheduled MIED program start, at the end of the 8-week MIED program (after the eighth scheduled session), and 1 month after scheduled program completion. Both groups follow the same schedule.
Chinese Short Form of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire
Mindfulness will be assessed using the Chinese 20-item short form of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-SF).
Time frame: Baseline, 2 and 4 weeks after scheduled MIED program start, at the end of the 8-week MIED program (after the eighth scheduled session), and 1 month after scheduled program completion. Both groups follow the same schedule.
Attendance at Online MIED Group Sessions
Attendance will be summarized as the number of online MIED group sessions attended by each participant assigned to the intervention group
Time frame: Attendance is recorded at each of the 8 scheduled online MIED group sessions. Sessions are held once weekly at a fixed time over 8 weeks, and each session lasts 120 minutes.
Days of Digital Practice Recorded by the iMIED Platform
Digital practice participation will be summarized as the number of days with a recorded practice activity during the 49-day iMIED program
Time frame: Daily from Day 1 through Day 49 of the iMIED mini-program. Day 1 is the scheduled start date of the mini-program.
Plan to share: Yes — Deidentified individual participant data (IPD) underlying the results reported in the main publication will be available upon reasonable request after publication of the primary trial results. The shared data will include deidentified participant-level data used in the primary and secondary analyses, including baseline characteristics, group allocation, outcome measures, follow-up assessments, adherence indicators, and safety outcomes. Directly or indirectly identifiable information will not be shared. Access will be provided to qualified researchers with a methodologically sound proposal, subject to approval by the principal investigator and relevant ethics requirements, and after completion of a data use agreement.
Supporting information: Study protocol, Statistical analysis plan, Informed consent form, Clinical study report, Analytic code
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Start is estimated for Nov 2026; primary completion for Jan 2027, 2 months later.
Of 25 interventional studies with no phase under Emotional Eating, half reached primary completion within 8 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 3 and three quarters within 14. This study's planned 2 months is below that.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
This study is not yet recruiting, as verified in Nov 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
Get an email when the registry record changes — status, dates, results — or when someone posts here.
Sign in to followQuestions and observations about this study, from anyone following it. Not medical advice, and not a channel to the study team — their contact details are on the registry record.
Sign in to join the discussion. Reading takes no account; posting does. You choose a display name, and a pseudonym is the default.
Nothing here yet. If you are running this trial, taking part in it, or weighing whether to, this is the place to say so.
Xinghua Liu