اختلالات تغذیه ای در مردان و زنان نوجوان: ارتباط با مشکلات خلق و خو، عاطفی و رفتاری و خودشایستگی ادراک شده

The purpose of this study was to describe similarities and differences for adolescent males and females in the association between disordered eating and temperament, emotional and behavioral problems and perceived self-competence. The study sample consisted of 239 youngsters (47% males), aged 14–20 years. Drive for Thinness (DT), Bulimia (B) and Body Dissatisfaction (BD) were associated with eating disorder (ED) related traits, depression and negative perceived self-competence in both sexes. Further, Bulimia was significantly related with aggressive symptoms in both sexes. Additionally, gender differences with respect to the correlations between DT and B and temperament emerged. DT was more strongly associated with a low behavioral activation (BAS) in males (compared to females), whereas B was more strongly related with low effortful control in females (compared to males). These findings confirm and extend previous research concerning gender differences in disordered eating.

During adolescence, several biological, psychological and social factors are salient in predisposing the individual to different types of emotional and behavioral problems, including hazardous substance use, behavioral problems, dysfunctional eating behavior, and mood disorders (Tarter, 2002). Among adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems, symptom expression is strongly influenced by gender: females are more prone to inwardly directed symptomatology, whereas males are more prone to acting out behaviorally (Leadbeater, Kuperminc, Blatt, & Hertzog, 1999). The present paper focuses on eating disorder (ED) symptoms, which have a strong female preponderance with an overall gender ratio varying from 3:1 to 10:1 (Hautala et al., 2008). Because of this gender imbalance, disordered eating patterns and their correlates have been documented very extensively for females but are understudied for males. The present study aims at filling this gap by investigating gender differences in eating disorder symptoms and their correlates (personality, temperament, emotional and behavioral problems, perceived self-competence). We focus on eating disorder symptoms rather than on eating disorder diagnoses, as previous research has shown that in boys, prevalence rates of DSM-diagnoses of EDs are very low but subclinical disordered eating relatively widespread (Muise, Stein, & Arbess, 2003).

For both sexes, means and standard deviations of all scales are displayed in Table 1. Females scored significantly higher on the EDI-II DT, B, BD, I and IA compared to males. Table 2 shows the proportion of EDI-II scores in the clinical range for males and females, based on cut-off scores provided in the Dutch manual of the EDI-II (Van Strien, 2002). Pearson correlations between EDI-II DT, B, BD and EDI-II ED-related traits were calculated for both females and males (Table 3). DT, B, and BD were positively related to I and IA and unrelated to MF in both sexes. Furthermore, DT and B were positively related to P in both sexes; whereas DT and BD were positively related to ID in both sexes. There were no significant gender differences in the magnitude of these associations. Regression analyses (Table 7) showed that, in both sexes, lack of IA was the only significant predictor of ED-related symptoms.