Associations of food addiction and nonsuicidal self‐injury among women with an eating disorder: A common strategy for regulating emotions?
European Eating Disorders Review
Published online on October 15, 2018
Abstract
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Abstract
Objective
We examined the association between lifetime nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI), emotion regulation, and food addiction (FA) in women (n = 220) with eating disorders (ED) compared with (n = 121) healthy controls (HC).
Method
Participants were assessed via face‐to‐face interviews for ED diagnosis and lifetime NSSI. FA was assessed with Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 and emotion regulation using the Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS).
Results
The prevalence of FA was significantly higher among women with an ED when compared with HC (75.9% vs. 4.1%, p < 0.001). Similarly, subjects presenting FA showed a high prevalence of lifetime NSSI, in both ED and HC (40.7% and 60.0%, respectively). Our predictive model revealed FA and DERS total scores as indicators of the presence of lifetime NSSI independent of group assignment, ED diagnosis, and age.
Conclusions
These findings suggest a shared aetiology between ED, NSSI, and FA, explained possibly in part by emotion‐regulation deficits.
- European Eating Disorders Review, EarlyView.