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Updated: Jun 25, 2025

A Computer-Based Platform for Aiding Clinicians in Eating Disorder Analysis and Diagnosis
Published on: May 10, 2022
Risk and resilience in eating disorders: differentiating pathways among psychosocial predictors
Maria Bazo Perez1, Leslie D Frazier2
1Department of Psychology, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33199, USA. mbazo002@fiu.edu.
Objective:
Eating disorders (EDs) represent a rising global health concern. The current study takes a multivariate approach to examine psychological (i.e., perfectionism, anxiety sensitivity [AS], emotion dysregulation) and sociocultural factors (i.e., body dissatisfaction) that may relate to risk and resilience in EDs.
Methods:
Participants were 698 undergraduate students (Mage = 21, SDage = 4.02), mainly female (71%) and Hispanic (61.6%), who participated in an online survey assessing perfectionism, emotion dysregulation, AS, body dissatisfaction, and eating behaviors.
Results:
The results from structural equation model analyses revealed differential associations with disordered eating (DE) outcomes. Self-oriented perfectionism and dysmorphic appearance concerns were associated with increased dieting/carb restriction, desire for thinness, and binging tendencies. Specifically, emotional nonacceptance and lack of emotional awareness showed associations with elevated risk for dieting/carb restriction and purging tendencies, respectively. Conversely, lack of emotional clarity showed a protective pathway to these risk behaviors. Anxiety sensitivity cognitive concerns related to higher purging tendencies, while AS social concerns related to lower purging and binging tendencies.
Discussion:
Findings highlight the differential pathways of psychosocial risk and resilience for EDs. Subscales of emotional dysregulation and AS showed risk as well as resilience associations with DE outcomes. This information is key for advancing transdiagnostic prevention and intervention to reduce the rising rates of EDs.
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