Does the overvaluation of shape and weight predict initial symptom severity or treatment outcome among patients with binge eating disorder?

Abstract

Objective To examine whether overvaluation of shape and weight is associated with initial symptom severity or treatment outcome among patients with binge eating disorder (BED). Method Patients with BED (n= 116) completed assessments at baseline and treatment termination, including the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE), and self-report measures of eating-related cognitions and behaviors, depression, and self-esteem. Clinical overvaluation was determined by EDE. Results The clinical overvaluation group demonstrated significantly higher pre-treatment scores on measures of depression, behavioral and cognitive aspects of binge eating, and eating-related psychopathology, and lower self-esteem scores than individuals without overvaluation. At treatment termination, patients with overvaluation continued to display elevated scores on measures of binge eating severity at a trend level. Discussion Overvaluation of shape and weight was associated with symptom severity in patients with BED, but additional research is needed to determine whether this construct holds clinically useful predictive validity for treatment outcome.

Prospective Association Between Overvaluation of Weight and Binge Eating Among Overweight Adolescent Girls

“…Our findings align with studies conducted among adults that have found greater levels of depression among individuals with BED who overvalue weight. [8, 34–36] To our knowledge, ours is the first study to examine the significance of overvaluation of weight in BED in a sample of older adolescents. Similar to our findings, Hilbert and Czaja found that among children ages 8 to 13 years (mean (sd) age = 10.78 (1.5) years), the criterion of “undue influence of weight or shape on self-evaluation” was sensitive in discriminating children with loss of control eating suffering from clinically significant eating disorders from subclinical cases.…”

Mild, moderate, meaningful? Examining the psychological and functioning correlates of DSM‐5 eating disorder severity specifiers

“…Consistent with prior research, for the AN and BED groups overvaluation of shape and weight was operationalized using two items from the EDE, and for the BN group the two corresponding items from the EDE‐Q were used (Grilo et al, ; Ojserkis, Sysko, Goldfein, & Devlin, ): “Over the past 4 weeks, has your shape been important in influencing how you feel about (judge, think, evaluate) yourself as a person?” and “Over the past 4 weeks, has your weight been important in influencing how you feel about (judge, think, evaluate) yourself as a person?” Both items are rated from 0 to 6, with 0 indicating “no importance” and 6 indicating “supreme importance.” The overvaluation of shape and weight group consisted of participants who rated either of these items at or above the clinical cutoff score of 4 (moderate importance).…”

Emotion regulation difficulties in binge eating disorder with and without the overvaluation of weight and shape

“…Prospective research is needed to examine the temporal stability of overvaluation and its associations with ER difficulties and other outcomes over time (Masheb and Grilo, 2008;Ojserkis et al, 2012). Inclusion of males with BED and variants of BED in future research is important because these conditions are relatively common in men and because findings from recent epidemiological studies suggest that the prevalence of binge eating, and its impact on psychosocial functioning, may be increasing in men (Hay et al, 2008;Striegel et al, 2012;Mitchison et al, 2014).…”