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Alexithymia, body image and eating disorders

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

It is widely recognized that the body dissatisfaction and an excessive concern about body weight and shape are core characteristic of Eating Disorders (EDs) and are used to determine self-worth. Recently, there was an increased interest about the body image as a multidimensional issue that involves perceptual, attitudinal and behavioral characteristics. Many researchers have focused their attention mainly to the perceptual and attitudinal aspects of body image whereas only few studies have investigated the behavioral consequences related to a negative body image. Moreover, it is known that alexithymia may play an important role in EDs: specifically alexithymics patients may show a higher psychological distress than nonalexithymics and the presence of an alexithymic trait may be related to a higher severity of EDs themselves. Some core aspects of alexithymic construct, as a difficulty in distinguishing emotional states from bodily sensations, may be more characterized in patients with EDs and a possible explanation might be that ED patients may appear dramatically and deeply incapable of being in touch with their inner emotive world. As consequence, these subjects may focus their attention on negative perceptual aspects of body bypassing emotional experiences. Taken together, these findings may suggest that alexithymia and body image disturbances may be strongly correlated in EDs and, therefore, the aim of this paper will be to elucidate these relationships along with the presentation of a clinical study on 64 patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of anorexia nervosa.