Prevalence of Eating Disorders and Alexithymia among a sample of Egyptian Medical Students Not Attending Psychiatric Clinics

Abstract

Abstract Background Eating disorders are prevalent psychiatric disorders and a major Public health burden worldwide, having huge impact on physical and mental health, The student population seems to be vulnerable to eating disorders, but is this in relation to their ability to express their emotions or alexithymia? Aim of the work To evaluate the relationship between alexithymia and eating disorders. Subjects and methods this is a cross sectional study done on a stratified random sample of 575 medical students in Ain- Shams University, started from 2018 till July 2019, those with history of chronic physical or mental illness were excluded, all students were subjected to Designed clinical sheet for demographic data, Arabic version of Eating Attitude Test -26 (EAT-26) as screening tool for eating disturbances in non-clinical populations and Arabic version of Toronto scale 20 to measure alexithymia. Results our study revealed disordered eating 12.3% among the study sample, alexithymia 24.4% and significant variation in scores of eating disorder according to alexithymia scores. Conclusion our study revealed positive correlation between eating disorders and alexithymia consistently with hypothesis of emotional regulation deficits in eating disorders.