Early reports suggest that lockdown measures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., social distancing) are having adverse consequences for people’s mental health, including increases in maladaptive eating habits and body dissatisfaction. Certain groups, such as those with pre-existing mental health difficulties, may be especially at risk. The current study explored perceived changes in eating, exercise, and body image during lockdown within the United Kingdom, using an online survey (n = 264). There were large individual differences in perceived changes in eating, exercise, and body image in this period. Women were more likely than men to report increasing struggles with regulating eating, preoccupation with food and worsening body image. Those with a current/past diagnosis of eating disorders reported significantly greater difficulties in regulating eating, increased preoccupation with food, exercise thoughts and behaviours and concern about appearance, even when compared to those with other mental health and developmental disorders. Ongoing research to explore individual differences in the trajectories of change in eating, exercise and body image as lockdown measures ease will be important for understanding the full psychological impact of this pandemic and improve service and public health planning going forward.

The main objective of this systematic review was to provide a comprehensive overview of the psychometric properties of all available Orthorexia Nervosa (ON) assessment tools, in order to evaluate their scope of application for research and practice. Ten databases were searched for studies quantitatively assessing ON. The psychometric properties were evaluated according to specified quality criteria, focusing on the reliability, structural validity and construct validity of the scales. A meta-analytic approach was used to summarize eligible Cronbach's alpha coefficients between studies. Sixty-eight unique studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria for this systematic review. Ten discrete ON scales were identified. Half of the included studies exclusively utilized a version of the ORTO-15. The evaluation of all available ON measures raise issues regarding ON's dimensionality and conceptualization.Most of the identified scales require further validation. Based on the reported psychometric properties it is advised to re-evaluate existing tools and to focus on establishing consensus regarding the conceptualization of ON to establish a measure with sound psychometric properties.

The current study assessed attitudes of youth toward anthropometric measurements-specifically, weight and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) measurements. We hypothesized that nonclinical youth would report fewer intrusive thoughts about MUAC than about weight measurements, and that higher eating pathology would be associated with more intrusive thoughts. We further hypothesized that youth with an eating disorder would have more negative comments about anthropometric measurements than would nonclinical youth. Nonclinical youth were recruited from local schools, while youth with eating disorders were recruited from an eating disorders treatment program. Participants completed self-report measures about their perceptions of weight and MUAC measurements. Data from 64 nonclinical youth and 30 youth with eating disorders were analyzed. As expected, nonclinical youth reported fewer intrusive thoughts about MUAC measurements than about weight measurements. Eating pathology was positively correlated with intrusive thoughts. Youth with eating disorders reported more negative responses about weighing than did nonclinical youth; however, no group differences emerged for perceptions of MUAC measurements. MUAC appears to be a tolerable process for youth, which evokes fewer negative responses than does weight measurement in youth with eating disorders. Although most nonclinical youth reported few intrusive thoughts about anthropometric measurements, a significant minority perceived measurements to be a negative process.

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