Personality disorders and obesity: a systematic review

Abstract

In prevention and conservative weight-loss treatment strategies, more care should be taken to address the special needs of patients with comorbid PDs.

Personality and eating and weight disorders: an open research challenge

“…In addition, impulsiveness and altered emotional regulation seem to impact clinical symptoms in people with obesity [19] and severe obesity with food 1 3 addiction [20]. Overall, AN-r is more frequent associated with Cluster C PDs (i.e., avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive) or their characteristic traits and the EWD conditions characterized by binge-eating and/or purging behaviours are more frequently associated Cluster B PDs (i.e., antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic) or their characteristic traits [11][12][13]15].…”

“…Although research on BED (recently recognized as a distinct diagnostic category in the DSM-5) is still limited [13], some studies suggested that (obese and nonobese) patients with BED endorse comparable levels of affective instability to those with BN [2,17,18], and indicated that this variable predicts BED and BN severity [17,18]. Impulsiveness, however, appears to be a key predictor for overweight and obesity development [12]. In addition, impulsiveness and altered emotional regulation seem to impact clinical symptoms in people with obesity [19] and severe obesity with food 1 3 addiction [20].…”

“…To date, it is known that the most frequent specific PD diagnoses in both adults [11][12][13][14] and adolescents [15,16] with EWDs are the avoidant, obsessive-compulsive, and borderline PDs. In addition, the avoidant and obsessive-compulsive PDs are among the most frequently diagnosed PDs in restricting anorexia nervosa (AN-r), whereas borderline and avoidant PDs are commonly diagnosed in people with binge-eating/purging AN (AN-bp), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge-eating disorder (BED), and obesity [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

“…In addition, the avoidant and obsessive-compulsive PDs are among the most frequently diagnosed PDs in restricting anorexia nervosa (AN-r), whereas borderline and avoidant PDs are commonly diagnosed in people with binge-eating/purging AN (AN-bp), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge-eating disorder (BED), and obesity [11][12][13][14][15][16]. People with EWDs tend to be characterized by elevated perfectionism, sensitivity to social rewards, impulsiveness, and affective instability, and these features appear to discriminate patients from controls [12,13]. Differences across EWD conditions also seem to exist, with the current evidence revealing that perfectionism and fear of criticism are more recurrent in AN-r, whereas affective instability and emotional dysregulation are more evidenced in AN-bp and BN [13].…”

“…In the last 2 decades, many research groups have focused on the role of personality in EWDs, with recent systematic and meta-analytic reviews of the literature highlighting the common comorbidity of personality disorders (PDs) in EWDs and suggesting the impact of personality (traits and disorders) in EWDs clinical course and treatment outcome [11][12][13].…”