Comparison of body size estimation and eating disorder inventory scores in anorexia and bulimia patients with obese, and restrained and unrestrained controls

Abstract

Psychological attributes and body size estimation were compared in four subgroups of anorexia and bulimia patients, an obese group, an unrestrained control group, and a restrained control group. The four patient subgroups were anorectic-restrictors, anorectic-bulimics, bulimics with a history of anorexia, and bulimics without a history of anorexia. The bulimics with a past history of anorexia displayed the greatest degree of psychopathology, as measured by the Eating Disorder Inventory (ED/). Of the four anorexia and bulimia subgroups, the anorectic-restrictors displayed the least pathological EDI profile while the anorectic-bulimics and bulimics with no history of anorexia displayed intermediate profiles. All anorexia and bulimia subgroups overestimated the size of their hips and their body depth relative to the two control groups and the obese group. There were no differences in body size estimation between the subgroups of anorexia and bulimia patients. All four groups of patients showed improvements on both the EDI and body size estimation task with treatment. The implications of these findings for diagnostic criteria and appropriate subgrouping of anorexia and bulimia patients is discussed.