Symptoms of Psychopathology Within Groups of Eating-Disordered, Restrained Eating, and Unrestrained Eating Individuals.

Abstract

While eating-disordered individuals have shown high levels of comorbid psychopathology, there has not been an assessment of these symptoms across groups exhibiting different forms of problematic eating behavior. Using 1,122 participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, this study examined self-reported differences between controls, restrained eaters, and individuals meeting criteria for binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa on several measures of psychopathology unrelated to eating. On nearly all outcome measures, eating-disordered participants had greater symptoms of psychopathology compared to restrained eaters, who had greater levels compared to controls. Among the eating-disordered participants, bulimia nervosa participants had more symptoms of psychopathology than binge eating-disordered participants. Treatment of the populations included in this study may be informed by an understanding of the different amounts of symptoms of comorbid psychopathology that confer additional distress and impairment above and beyond disordered eating behavior.