Abstract
Background: Many people with eating disorders often report having suffered some kind of childhood trauma. For this reason, many studies have attempted to explore the mediating factors between traumatic experiences and the development of eating disorders. The aim of our study is to conduct a systematic review of published works on the mediating factors between childhood trauma and the development of eating disorders. Method: This review was carried out up to 5 December, 2020, using the databases PsycInfo and PubMed, combining the keywords, and applying a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: A total of 18 articles were retrieved. After the articles were analyzed, a set of mediating factors between childhood trauma and the development of eating disorders was established, including pathological dissociation, difficulty with emotion self-regulation, body dissatisfaction, negative affect/depression, anxiety, general distress, self-criticism, and alexithymia, among others. Conclusions: In addition to evaluating trauma in eating disorders, these results highlight the importance of paying special attention to the presence of various possible mediating factors, which must be taken into account in the planning of therapeutic treatment. Identifying symptoms of trauma or eating disorders early on could prevent onset of more severe psychopathology during adulthood.
Highlights
This study aims to perform a systematic review of the works published on the mediating factors between childhood traumatic experiences and the development of eating disorders (EDs), updating the data of previous reviews [10,17] and adding studies performed about several types of childhood traumatic experiences
Exclusion criteria were as follows: studies which did not explore the mediating factors existing between childhood trauma and the development of eating disorders, or which were published in a language other than English or Spanish
The results show that various variables may function as a possible mediator between childhood trauma and the development of an ED, such as anxiety, dissociation, core beliefs, depressive symptomatology, alexithymia, body dissatisfaction, self-criticism, difficulty with emotion regulation, anger, inefficiency, interoceptive awareness, food addiction, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Individuals with eating disorders (EDs) often report having suffered traumatic experiences during childhood [1,2]. EDs are serious psychiatric disorders, which alter cognitive function, judgment, emotional stability, and restrict the life activities of sufferers [3]. Studies carried out to explore these variables have shown this relationship to exist between EDs and traumatic experiences in childhood [3,4,5,6,7]. Child traumatic experiences are defined as all kinds of traumatic experiences occurring in childhood, which include emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect, rape, bullying by peers, witnessing domestic violence, and serious accidents that threatened the lives of subjects [5]
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