Original studyPsychreg Journal of Psychology, 2018Read the paper →
Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia carry one of the highest risks of early death of any mental illness. Yet much remains unclear about the personality patterns that go with them. A Canadian study suggests that people with more eating disorder traits lean more heavily on unhealthy ways of handling stress.
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan surveyed 429 students and staff who had not been diagnosed with an eating disorder. The findings appear in Psychreg Journal of Psychology. Participants completed three standard questionnaires on eating attitudes, defence mechanisms and coping strategies.
The team looked at traits of both anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. They then tested which defences and coping strategies best predicted higher levels of these traits, and whether the patterns differed between men and women.
Defence mechanisms are largely unconscious ways the mind protects itself from distress, and some are more mature than others. Coping strategies are more deliberate efforts to deal with problems, such as planning or seeking support. Somatisation means expressing distress through physical symptoms, and displacement means redirecting feelings onto a safer target.
People with stronger anorexia and bulimia traits reported using more immature and unhelpful defences and coping strategies. The link was stronger for defence mechanisms than for coping strategies.
Two defences stood out. Frequent use of somatisation and displacement most consistently predicted higher levels of both anorexia and bulimia traits. Coping strategies predicted eating disorder traits less often. Some differences also appeared between men and women, mostly in their levels of eating disorder traits.
The results suggest that people with high levels of eating disorder traits are likely to show features of personality difficulty, especially a heavy reliance on unhealthy defences. That could help clinicians understand and treat the conditions.
The study has clear limits. It used a university sample without diagnosed eating disorders, so the findings may not apply to people in treatment. Self-report measures of defence mechanisms are controversial, since these processes are thought to work partly outside awareness.
The researchers suggest repeating the study with people who have a clinical diagnosis and using other methods, such as picture-based tests, to measure defences. Such work could show whether certain defences make someone more vulnerable to developing an eating disorder.
