Abstract
People’s beliefs about their illness have been shown to affect their adjustment. The aim of this study was to describe illness perception in adolescent patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and assess its relationship with socio-emotional and academic adjustment following Leventhal’s Self-Regulation Model. Thirty-four female AN patients, with a mean age of 15.76 (SD = 2.00), completed the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R), the Psychosocial Adjustment to Illness Scale (PAIS) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HAD). Adolescent anorexia patients perceived that they had control over their illness and treatment would improve their condition. However, they also believed that it was highly distressing, going to last a long time and would have serious consequences. As for the causes of the disorder, they were attributed primarily to a specific eating disorder and psychological factors. The results showed that anorexia patients’ illness perceptions were related to socio-emotional and academic adjustment. In this sense, identity with the illness was associated with a worse academic adjustment, while emotional representation was associated with a worse emotional and social adjustment. These findings highlight how important it is for patients’ beliefs about their disease to be considered in the treatment of anorexia. In this respect, clinicians treating these patients should consider how certain beliefs affect their academic and socio-emotional adjustment. It would be interesting for patients to become aware of how these beliefs influence the strategies they use to cope with their disease as well as their adjustment to it.
Highlights
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a chronic and complex mental illness with serious physical and social consequences (Patel et al, 2016)
Illness perception in adolescent AN patients may not coincide with the clinical conception of this disorder, and their understanding of this illness and its causes, consequences, duration, and treatment effectiveness may significantly influence their recovery process
The results of this study showed that adolescent AN patients reported experiencing a moderate number of physical symptoms and believed that they had control over their disease and that the treatment was effective for their recovery
Summary
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a chronic and complex mental illness with serious physical and social consequences (Patel et al, 2016). Its prevalence ranges between 4 and 6% for women and under 1% in the case of men (DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Ward et al, 2019) It is characterized by a high resistance to treatment with serious family and social repercussions, including the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness (López and Treasure, 2011; Ward et al, 2019). Anorexia nervosa is diagnostically defined by abnormal eating behavior and distorted attitudes toward body weight and shape (DSM-5). It has a high impact on patients’ quality of life, affecting their physical and psychological health as well as having important consequences for their academic and social functioning (Treasure et al, 2015)
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