The majority of professionally active women diagnosed with eating disorders may be at risk of work addiction: an overlooked comorbidity

Abstract

BackgroundWork addiction (WA) has been previously linked to several diseases and disorders, but there is scarce literature on its association with eating disorders (EDs). Both WA and EDs share similar etiological factors (notably rigid perfectionism) and clinical features. The aim of this study was to provide an initial overview of the literature on this potential comorbidity, and investigate the co-occurrence of EDs and WA, and their relationship with socio-demographic and work-related variables, health, and personality.Participants and procedureIn a pen-and-pencil cross-sectional study, the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS), a question about a current or previous diagnosis of EDs and other mental disorders, personality questionnaires, and questions concerning demographic, health and work-related variables were administered to 723 Polish employees from various pro-fessions.ResultsSix females (0.8%) and none of the males declared having been diagnosed with EDs, which is, to a large ex-tent, congruent with the expected prevalence in the general population. Five out of these six females (83%) reached the cut-off score for WA. Of all women who reached this cut-off, 5.5% reported EDs. All these women were in their twenties, not married, having no children, working in non-managerial positions, with body mass index (BMI) in the normal range or below. Preliminary comparisons with matched comparison groups were conducted.ConclusionsThese initial results suggest that WA may be highly prevalent among professionally active women diagnosed with EDs. Functioning of individuals with EDs in the workplace is a vastly understudied issue which merits more attention owing to high suicide risk and mortality due to health complications, particularly cardiovascular dis-ease (CVD), related to EDs and overworking, a significant prevalence of subclinical EDs in female populations (especially among youth), and a typically worse prognosis for EDs comorbid with other disorders. Both prob-lematic behaviors are related to denial, which suggests that these may be much more prevalent problems than current estimates indicate.