Examining implicit attitudes toward emaciation and thinness in anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE: To determine if females with anorexia nervosa (AN) associate emaciation with beauty by examining implicit attitudes toward emaciated bodies relative to thin bodies. METHOD: Thirty women with AN and 29 healthy control women were primed by viewing images of either emaciated or thin women. Participants then completed a lexical decision task (LDT), wherein they distinguished words from nonwords as quickly and accurately as possible. Response times were measured. Real words consisted of beautiful, ugly, neutral, and positive words. Body mass index (BMI) was measured and several clinical interviews were completed, including the Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire 4 (EDEQ-4). RESULTS: There was a significant effect of group in the emaciated condition; participants with AN responded faster to both beautiful and ugly words than control women did. Eating disorder symptom severity (as measured by the EDEQ-4 subscales) predicted the strength of the association between emaciation and beauty. DISCUSSION: At an implicit, automatic level, women with AN in this study had stronger associations between emaciation and both beauty and ugliness than control women did, suggesting that women with AN may have atypical beliefs about beauty. Thin ideal internalization is an important factor in the development and maintenance of eating disorders; the type of thin ideal being internalized may be important to consider, particularly given the extent to which pro-eating disorder websites promote idealization of emaciation. The associations found by using the LDT highlight the utility of implicit measures, particularly when conducting assessments involving sensitive or atypical beliefs.

[Leningrad blockade and its medical implications. Part 2].

Medical consequences of Leningrad blockade are considered from the standpoint of modern science. Pathologies acquired by blockade survivors are regarded as extreme polymorbid conditions caused by combined effect of prolonged psychemotional stress, largest-scale famine, and hypothermia responsible for undermining vital functions. Special emphasis is laid on the role of nervous system dysregulation in the development of many diseases. The influence of physiological and pathological stress on the outcome of alimentary dystrophia is discussed in the psychosomatic context. Pathogenesis of dystrophia and "Leningrad" hypertension is analysed. Mechanisms of survival and rehabilitation in subjects with persistent traces of blockade pathology are considered.

[Leningrad blockade and its medical implications. Part 1].

Medical consequences of Leningrad blockade are considered from the standpoint of modern science. Pathologies acquired by blockade survivors are regarded as extreme polymorbid conditions caused by combined effect of prolonged psychemotional stress, largest-scale famine, and hypothermia responsible for undermining vital functions. Special emphasis is laid on the role of nervous system dysregulation in the development of many diseases. The influence of physiological and pathological stress on the outcome of alimentary dystrophia is discussed in the psychosomatic context. Pathogenesis of dystrophia and Leningrad hypertension is analysed. Mechanisms of survival and rehabilitation in subjects with persistent traces of blockade pathology are considered.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder: Using facial electromyography to examine the association between eating disorder symptoms and perceptions of emaciation among undergraduate women.

Thin-ideal internalization, drive for thinness, and over-evaluation of the importance of thinness are associated with eating disorders (EDs). However, little research has examined to what extent perceptions of emaciation are also associated with ED symptoms. In the present study, 80 undergraduate women self-reported on ED symptomatology and perceptions of emaciated, thin, and overweight female bodies. While participants viewed images of these different body types, facial electromyography was used to measure activation of facial muscles associated with disgust reactions. Emaciated and overweight bodies were rated negatively and elicited facial responses consistent with disgust. Further, ED symptomatology was associated with pronounced aversion to overweight bodies (assessed via self-report pleasantness ratings), and attenuated negative affect to emaciated bodies (assessed via facial electromyography). The latter association was significant even when controlling for self-reported perceptions of emaciation, suggesting that psychophysiological methods in ED research may provide valuable information unavailable via self-report.

[Dysperception of body image and dysmorphophobias in mental anorexia. Apropos of 115 cases involving both sexes. I. Altered mechanisms of perception in mental anorexia]. / Dysperception de l'image corporelle et dysmorphophobies dans l'anorexie mentale. A propos de 115 cas des deux sexes. I. L'altération des mécanismes de perception dans l'anorexie mentale.

We noted frequency of body-image disturbance (BID) and dismorphophobias (DPP) in 97 girls and 8 boys among 107 girls and 8 boys with Anorexia Nervosa (AN), seen since 1973 and coming up semiologic criterions of Laboucarie and Dally & Sargant. 91,5% of the girls and 7 out of 8 boys presented a BID at one time of their evolution. The other ones did not form a characteristic group. BID prevailed in no-perception of emaciation. No-perception of overweight was exceptional. That of variations of weight was frequent, explaining to need objective elements to measure real volume. BID seems to result from an incapacity to integrate well individually perceived details into a coherent image. Its apparition signals starting of AN, and it is a fundamental criterion of evolutivity. It's not frequent it's extended to body-image disperception of the close people, but it is often associated to an increase of mental representation of ingested feed volume.

[Dysperception of body image and dysmorphophobias in mental anorexia. Apropos of 115 cases involving both sexes. III. Physiopathogenic deductions and introduction of a novel definition of the disease]. / Dysperception de l'image corporelle et dysmorphophobies dans l'anorexie mentale: A propos de 115 cas des deux sexes. III. Déductions physiopathogéniques et introduction d'une nouvelle définition de l'affection.

Ignoring of emaciation (IE), fear of any weight recovery (Dalpha), and dismorphophobias (DPP) represent the central problem of AN, with different incidence. Fundamental need of being lean expresses, at lesss in girls, distress of personality insufficiently prepared to autonomous adult life, with its responsabilities. Obesity-DPP may correspond to projection upon the body of the obsessing conviction of being inferior, with regard to social and publicitary patterns, and get an active play in starting and management of weight loss. So AN is either an attempt to accomodate this critic situation, trying to incarnate actual female archetype, either, in the more severe cases, a renouncing with an obstinate physical and psychological recession to the state of a protected child. It seems to correspond to an attempt of negation of morbid character of this situation, so that it may be perpetuated and so that feeling of culpability can be decreased in front of familial recrimination. Constancy of these symptoms, and their relation with deep meaning of this illness, justify their introduction into a new definition of AN, diagnosed by association of at less 2 out of 3 major criterious (loss of weight superior to 10% premorbid weight, feed restrictions and Dalpha) and one out of 2 minor criterions (amenorrhea and IE).

Failure to thrive at the breast: an old problem revisited.

Four apparently normal breast-fed infants failed to thrive when fed on demand. They all shared a tendency to accept long intervals between feeds from birth. Infant welfare clinics should be alerted to this problem. If infants who attend these clinics are accurately weighed and their progress carefully recorded on weight charts this insidiously developing complaint could be detected earlier and with appropriate advice, a potentially serious condition averted.

Comorbilidad de los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria y el abuso de sustancias / Comorbidity between eating disorders and substance abuse

Objetivo: los distintos trastornos de la conducta alimentaria presentan diferentes tasas de comorbilidad con uso y abuso de sustancias. La bulimia nerviosa es la enfermedad en la que se han descrito mayor número de trastornos por abuso de sustancias. El objetivo de este estudio es conocer la asociación entre los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria y el uso y abuso de alcohol y otras sustancias psicoactivas y comparar el consumo entre los diferentes tipos de los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria. Material y métodos: en un estudio retrospectivo realizado en Álava (277.000 habitantes) en el único centro de tratamiento intensivo de los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria. Los pacientes fueron evaluados mediante la entrevista semiestructurada SCID-P para el DSM-IV. Se utilizó un detallado cuestionario para recoger historia de uso de drogas o alcohol según criterios DSM-IV. Resultados: se evaluaron un total de 47 pacientes, con una mediana de edad de 18 años. El 55,32 por ciento eran Anorexias Nerviosas Restricitivas (ANR), el 21,28 por ciento Anorexias Nerviosas Purgativas (ANP) y el 23,40 por ciento Bulimias (B). EL 100 por ciento de las pacientes bulímicas consume algún tipo de sustancia, el 60 por ciento de las ANP y el 34,61 por ciento de las ANR. Discusión: los pacientes con ANR tienen patrones de consumo significativamente diferentes a los otros dos grupos, presentando las ANP consumos intermedios. Es necesario hacer estudios para identificar los factores etiológicos de la comorbilidad de estos dos síndromes. Objetivo: los distintos trastornos de la conducta alimentaria presentan diferentes tasas de comorbilidad con uso y abuso de sustancias. La bulimia nerviosa es la enfermedad en la que se han descrito mayor número de trastornos por abuso de sustancias. El objetivo de este estudio es conocer la asociación entre los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria y el uso y abuso de alcohol y otras sustancias psicoactivas y comparar el consumo entre los diferentes tipos de los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria. Material y métodos: en un estudio retrospectivo realizado en Álava (277.000 habitantes) en el único centro de tratamiento intensivo de los trastornos de la conducta alimentaria. Los pacientes fueron evaluados mediante la entrevista semiestructurada SCID-P para el DSM-IV. Se utilizó un detallado cuestionario para recoger historia de uso de drogas o alcohol según criterios DSM-IV. Resultados: se evaluaron un total de 47 pacientes, con una mediana de edad de 18 años. El 55,32 por ciento eran Anorexias Nerviosas Restricitivas (ANR), el 21,28 por ciento Anorexias Nerviosas Purgativas (ANP) y el 23,40 por ciento Bulimias (B). EL 100 por ciento de las pacientes bulímicas consume algún tipo de sustancia, el 60 por ciento de las ANP y el 34,61 por ciento de las ANR. Discusión: los pacientes con ANR tienen patrones de consumo significativamente diferentes a los otros dos grupos, presentando las ANP consumos intermedios. Es necesario hacer estudios para identificar los factores etiológicos de la comorbilidad de estos dos síndromes. (AU)