Nicole Obeid

Scientist, CHEO Research Institute

Dr. Nicole Obeid is an applied developmental psychologist who is currently a Scientist and Lead of the Eating Disorder Research Lab with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. She is also an Associate Professor with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and the Past-President of the Eating Disorder Association of Canada (EDAC). She has worked in the field of eating disorders for over almost two decades with interests in etiological risk and maintenance factors of eating disorders, treatment studies of youth with severe eating disorders, health systems research with a focus on early intervention, and applying patient-oriented research mechanisms to guide this work.

Research Projects

  1. A framework for conceptualizing early intervention for eating disorders

    01/03/2023

    Attending to these recommendations would transform ED service provision and allow early intervention to be a standard part of best practice care. Progress in other areas of psychiatry shows that this is possible.

  2. Appearance satisfaction mediates the relationship between recreational screen time and depressive symptoms in adolescents

    18/07/2022

    Our results indicate that appearance satisfaction medi-ated the direct effect of recreational screen time on depressive symptoms, recreational screen time was sig-nificantly related to lower appearance satisfaction, which was significantly predictive of more severe depres-sive symptoms. As such, findings warrant randomized controlled trials designed to determine whether modu-lating screen time may be an efficacious strategy to reduce appearance dissatisfaction and depressive symp-toms during adolescence.

  3. Examining the Bidirectional Association Between Body Esteem and Body Mass Index During Adolescence

    01/11/2021

    The decreasing trajectory of body esteem over time suggests the need for prevention efforts to improve body esteem throughout adolescence.

  4. Coping in adolescents: A mediator between stress and disordered eating

    16/06/2021

    Overall, the findings from this study are among the first to demonstrate significant mediation relationships between stress (both negative life events and perceived stress) and ED symptomatology for emotion-oriented coping in both male and female adolescents. These findings suggest that using emotion-oriented coping in response to real or perceived stress increases the risk for ED symptomatology across all adolescents. These findings suggest that intervention or prevention efforts aimed at teaching adolescents how to tackle or cope with a problem by aiming to address the stressor itself (i.e. task-oriented coping) versus trying to escape the emotion that accompanies it may have a protective effect against emerging ED symptomatology, and likely full-blown eating disorders in the face of stress during a vulnerable developmental period.

  5. The impact of COVID-19 on adolescents with eating disorders: a cohort study

    04/06/2021

    Further research is required to better understand the impact of the pandemic on the clinical course and outcomes of EDs in adolescents.