The relationship between self-control and symptoms of anxiety and depression in patients with eating disorders: a cross-sectional study including exploratory longitudinal data

Abstract

Plain English summary Eating disorders (EDs) are mental disorders characterized by a persevering behavioral disturbance in eating and distress in thoughts or emotions, significantly impairing psychosocial function and/or physical health. Anxiety and depression are common in patients with EDs. Studies have indicated that personality style may impact the onset, clinical presentation, and recovery from an ED. Personality style can be studied in terms of self-control, ranging from over- to undercontrol. However, it remains unknown how self-control relates to anxiety/depression in patients with EDs and its stability during ED treatment. This is what we aimed to investigate in this study, collecting data before treatment in 227 adult patients from a Swedish outpatient ED clinic, with 14 also completing post-treatment measurements. Our results indicated that global anxiety/depression levels in patients with EDs were not strongly correlated with levels of self-control, but rather with ED symptoms. Nevertheless, anxiety seemed to increase with increasing levels of undercontrol and extreme values of both over- and undercontrol showed a tendency to be associated with higher levels of depression. In the exploratory analyses self-control levels remained more stable during treatment than global anxiety/depression levels, which decreased significantly.

Keywords

• Eating disorders
• Personality style
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Self-control
• Overcontrol