Source
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Virchow Klinikum, Germany. nora.schneider@charite.de
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To examine differences in body size estimation in adolescents with different types of eating disorders.
METHOD:
A total of 129 patients with eating disorders (M(age) = 16.0 +/- 1.8) and 354 healthy control participants (CP) (M(age) = 15.2 +/- 2.1) completed the EDI-2 and were asked to estimate the circumference of selected body parts by using string (BID-CA).
RESULTS:
CP showed an average overestimation of 8-16%, depending on the estimated body part. Eating disorder patients overestimated their body parts on average by about 30%. Thigh and waist estimations were the best variables for discriminating between patients with eating disorders and CP. No significant differences were found between bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa patients.
CONCLUSIONS:
Body image distortion plays an important role in both anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The BID-CA is well suited to discriminate between healthy and disordered overestimation of body parts.