An innovative approach for the assessment of mood disturbances in patients with eating disorders.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of mood in eating disorders (EDs) has important clinical implications, but the current standard psychiatric classification (DSM-5) has limitations. The aim of the current study is to broaden the evaluation of depressive symptomatology by providing a comprehensive and innovative assessment approach in EDs through instruments that capture clinical phenomena of demoralization, subclinical distress, and psychological well-being. METHODS: Seventy-nine patients who met diagnostic criteria for EDs of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fifth edition (DSM-5) were evaluated for depressive symptoms through Paykel's Clinical Interview for Depression, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 for major depressive episode and persistent depressive disorder, and the Diagnostic Criteria for Psychosomatic Research (DCPR) interview for demoralization. Further, self-report inventories encompassing psychological well-being and distress were used. RESULTS: Guilt, abnormal reactivity to social environment, and depressed mood were the most common depressive symptoms in the sample. DSM-defined depressive disorders were found in 55.7% of patients. The DCPR-demoralization criteria identified an additional 20.3% of the sample that would have been undetected with DSM criteria. Both DSM and DCPR diagnostic categories were associated with compromised psychological well-being and distress. Demoralization, unlike depression, was not associated with the severity of ED symptomatology. CONCLUSION: The findings indicate that a standard psychiatric approach, DSM-5-based, captures only a narrow part of the spectrum of mood disturbances affecting patients with EDs. A broadened clinimetric assessment unravels the presence of demoralization and yields clinical distinctions that may entail prognostic and therapeutic differences among patients who would be otherwise simply labeled as depressed.