Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:1552-1557
Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
Symptoms of eating disorders in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder
TA Pigott, M Altemus, CS Rubenstein, JL Hill, K Bihari, F L'Heureux, S Bernstein and DL Murphy
Laboratory of Clinical Science, NIMH, Bethesda, MD 20892.
OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to explore potential overlap of the
symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders. METHOD: The
authors administered a structured, self-rating scale, the Eating Disorder
Inventory, to 59 outpatients at an obsessive-compulsive disorder clinic and
to 60 sex-matched normal volunteers. The Eating Disorder Inventory has been
previously validated as a reliable measure of the specific cognitive and
behavioral dimensions of the psychopathology typical of patients with
eating disorders. The scores of the patients with obsessive-compulsive
disorder and of the healthy comparison subjects were compared with those of
32 female inpatients with anorexia nervosa (N = 10) or bulimia nervosa (N =
22) who had also been given the inventory. RESULTS: The patients with
obsessive- compulsive disorder scored significantly higher than the healthy
comparison subjects on all eight subscales of the Eating Disorder
Inventory: drive for thinness, bulimia, body dissatisfaction,
ineffectiveness, perfectionism, interpersonal distrust, interoceptive
awareness, and maturity fears. Relative to the healthy subjects, male
patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder had more symptoms than female
patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The scores of the female
patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder were midway between those of
the 32 female patients with eating disorders and those of the 35 female
normal subjects. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that patients with
obsessive-compulsive disorder display significantly more disturbed eating
attitudes and behavior than healthy comparison subjects and that they share
some of the psychopathological eating attitudes and behavior that are
common to patients with eating disorders.
