title: Lower body weight is associated with less negative emotions in sad autobiographical memories of patients with anorexia nervosa.
abstract: Food restriction and weight-loss have been proposed to represent pathogenic mechanisms of emotion regulation in anorexia nervosa (AN). However, there is a lack of studies empirically examining this hypothesis. Therefore, the present study compared 25 women with AN and 25 healthy control women (HC) regarding spontaneous emotional processing of autobiographic memories. Participants' idiographic memories of sad autobiographic events were analyzed using computerized, quantitative text analysis as an unobtrusive approach of nonreactive assessment. Compared to HC, AN patients retrieved more negative but a comparable number of positive emotions. Moreover, the lesser the body weight in AN patients, the lesser negative emotions they retrieved, irrespective of current levels of depressive symptoms and duration of illness. No such association was found in HC. These preliminary findings are in line with models of AN proposing that food restriction and weight-loss may be negatively reinforced by the alleviation of aversive emotional responses.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, University Hospital Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 410, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; University of Heidelberg, Centre for Psychological Psychotherapy, Hauptstrasse 47-51, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. Electronic address: timo.brockmeyer@med.uni-heidelberg.de.
authors.forename: Timo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Brockmeyer
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grosse Holtforth
authors.forename: Hinrich
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bents
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Herzog
authors.forename: Hans-Christoph
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Friederich
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001325:Autobiographies as Topic; D001835:Body Weight; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Anorexia nervosa; Autobiographical memories; Eating disorders; Emotion regulation; Emotional processing