1 research outputs found
Emotional processing in eating disorders
Research into emotional processing in eating disorders (ED) is still very much in its
infancy. Milligan and Waller (2000), Waller et al (2003) and others have shown that
there is difficulty with the emotion of anger, especially in its expression. Whilst others
(e.g. Troop et al, 2000) have demonstrated an increased sensitivity for disgust with an
ED population. In recent years, there has been significant development in CBT
models of eating disorders; in particular, bulimia nervosa and these models have
started to suggest that eating disorder symptomatology acts as an emotional regulator
(e.g. Cooper et al, 2004; Waller et al, 2007). Although these models are a useful start
in understanding emotions in eating, there is a lack of a theoretical understanding of
why people with eating disorders have particular difficulties with certain emotions.
This thesis presented a detailed consideration of the literature that has attempted to
understand the relationship between emotions and eating disorder symptomatology by
proposing a new model of eating disorders that is based upon the recent theoretical
developments in emotional processing (i.e. SPAARS model, Power and Dalgleish,
1997, 1999). This SPAARS-ED model was used as the theoretical backdrop for the
thesis, and the data from the four studies were designed to test some of the key
hypotheses stemming from the model. The first study was a grounded theory study
that investigated perceptions of the basic emotions and the developmental histories of
emotions within a group of 11 people with severe anorexia nervosa. The results
highlighted themes of anger and sadness being suppressed, and were often regarded as
being 'toxic'. Furthermore, themes were also explored that focused on metaemotional skills and participants recollections of how their parents, peers and
caregivers used to respond to their emotions. The second study directly tested the
theoretical idea of 'coupled emotions', and this study found data that demonstrated
increased levels of disgust following an anger induction for people with bulimic
symptoms, in comparison to control participants. The third study was a survey based
study that quantitatively looked at both the predictive power of each of the basic
emotions for disordered eating patterns, and also how certain emotion response styles
from carers (e.g. punitive, dismissive, etc towards an emotion) were related to
disorder eating. The results showed that anger and sadness predicted eating disorder
symptoms, and the effect was large. However, there were no significant associations
between emotion response styles and disordered eating.The final study was a hybrid study that was based on the two quantitative studies in
this thesis. In a cross sectional study, a group of participants with anorexia nervosa
were compared to control participants. This study had two parts, with the first part
focusing on emotion regulation styles and core beliefs, whilst the second part repeated
and developed the experimental methodology from study 2. The results showed that
people with anorexia nervosa had significantly more internal dysfunctional emotion
regulation style, and significantly more negative beliefs about the self and others
when compared to controls. Interestingly these core beliefs patterns were significantly
correlated with state emotions, with negative other beliefs being correlated to state
anger, whilst negative internal beliefs were significantly correlated to state emotions
of disgust and sadness. The second part of this study showed that, following an
induced anger emotion, people with anorexia nervosa showed significantly higher
levels of disgust, and estimation of body size. This was taken as further evidence of a
potential coupled emotion effect, between anger and disgust within eating disorders.
These findings were then discussed, in relation to both the SPAARS-ED model, and
the general literature