Eating Disorders

Eating disorders 2

 Individual risk factors:
o Gender and age
o Negative body image
 More engagement in social media, selfie-taking and sharing  greater
overvaluation of shape and weight, more body dissatisfaction and dietary
constraint
 Relationship between social media and body concerns – bidirectional and
mutually reinforcing
o Internalization of thin ideal
 Family
 Parental criticism
 Media influences
 Body dimensions shown in media have become thinner over last few
decades
o Perfectionism
o Neurocognitive impairments
 OCD, perfectionist and social-communicative difficulties
 Intermediate phenotype triggered by a specific neurocognitive prfile
 Poor set-shifting and weak central coherence
o Dieting
o Negative emotionality
o Childhood sexual abuse
 Obesity
o High cholesterol
o Hypertension
o Diabetes
o Arthritis
o Cancer
o Risk and causal factors:
 Genetics
 Neurotransmitters and hormones
 Socio-cultural influences
 Family influences
 High fat, high calorie diet
 Alleviate distress or show love
 Overfeeding
 ‘socially contagious’ obesity
 Stress and ‘comfort food’
 Triggered by:
o Watching TV/movies
o Attending parties
o Becoming anxious, angry or bored
o Treatment:
 Lifestyle modifications
 Medications