Caratteristiche psicologiche associate ai disturbi del comportamento alimentare ed eating self-efficacy in un gruppo di pazienti obesi

An explorative study was conducted to assess psychological features associated with eating disorders (EDs) in a sample of obese patients; in fact, even if obesity is not considered an ED per se, some authors found that it is characterized by some psychological aspects common to EDs. Furthermore another purpose of this study was to explore eating self-efficacy, that is the individual confidences to resist overeating in particular situations, and its relationship with EDs's psychological features. 60 obese patients were asked to fill out the EDI-2 as a measure of psychological features common to EDs and the WEL questionnaire as a measure of eating self-efficacy. Descriptive statistics were used to report sample's characteristics and Pearson correlation coefficient was conducted to test the relationship between EDI-2 and WEL's dimensions. The results indicated that obese patients were characterized by some psychological traits common to EDs with an intermediate level between non clinical population and EDs patients. A relationship between eating selfefficacy while experiencing negative emotions and bulimic thought and behaviours was found. Further confirmative results may suggest the necessity of considering those psychological features in obesity treatment.