Emotional functioning in adolescent anorexia nervosa patients--a controlled study.
OBJECTIVE
In this study, emotional functioning of adolescent anorexia nervosa patients was compared with two control groups; another internalizing psychiatric outpatient group and a healthy control group.


METHODS
Forty-eight anorexia nervosa patients (AN), 21 other psychiatric outpatients with depressive and/or anxiety disorders (PSYCH) and 48 healthy controls (HC) completed a battery of tasks and questionnaires designed to measure different aspects of emotional functioning. Cognitive (parallel) tasks were administered to control for differences of a cognitive nature.


RESULTS
The AN and the PSYCH groups had clear deficits in emotional functioning compared to the HC group. Considering the data from the alexithymia questionnaire, it was the AN group who scored significantly worse on emotional functioning when compared to the HC group. Considering the data from the emotional tasks, both psychiatric groups performed worse than the HC group in their processing of visual emotional information and the PSYCH group had more difficulty in memorizing responses to auditory emotional stimuli than the AN and HC group. Furthermore, the PSYCH group processed auditory emotional information more slowly than the HC group. No differences between the three groups were found on the non-emotional, cognitive tasks.


CONCLUSIONS
Both the AN and PSYCH patients show deficits in their processing of emotional information and details are discussed.
Rudolph Magnus Institute for Neurosciences, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Marjo J S
MJ
Zonnevylle-Bender
Stephanie H M
SH
van Goozen
Peggy T
PT
Cohen-Kettenis
T Annemarie
TA
van Elburg
Herman
H
van Engeland
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003071:Cognition; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent