Health-related quality of life in adult inpatients affected by anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE: Poor awareness of illness in anorexia nervosa (AN) may render the assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) difficult. We aimed at evaluating severe AN patients' HRQoL at discharge using different instruments and correlating this measure with clinical variables. METHODS: We enrolled 71 adult AN inpatients admitted through the emergency department. At admission, all participants completed the following: Medical Outcome Short Form Health Survey, Eating Disorder Inventory-2 and Temperament and Character Inventory. At admission and discharge, body mass index, EuroQoL Health Questionnaire/Visual Analogue Scale and Clinical Global Impression were evaluated. RESULTS: The HRQoL was severely impaired at baseline, but it improved at discharge. HRQoL correlated with eating psychopathology and personality, but not with body mass index or Clinical Global Impression. CONCLUSION: The HRQoL effectively captured patients' improvement at discharge. Given its correlations with clinical variables, this instrument may be useful in clinical practice.

[Eating psychopathology and personality in eating disorders]. / Psicopatologia alimentare e personalità nei disturbi del comportamento alimentare.

OBJECTIVE: The question of how many psychopathologic factors are involved in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN) has no definite answer. The combination of psychopathology and personality research may shed a light upon the determinants of eating pathology. METHODS: The study consists in the administration of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and the Eating Disorder Inventory 2 (EDI-2) to 95 outpatient anorectic women (50 restrictive and 45 binge-purging) and to 92 bulimic outpatient women (78 with and 14 without purging behaviours). The respective scores of each DCA subgroup are compared. RESULTS: Restricter anorectics are characterised by lower novelty seeking on respect to all the other groups and by a higher self-directedness on respect to bingeing-purging anorectics and purging bulimics. Also psychopathologic differences between restricter anorectics and the other groups are extensive. Bingeing-purging anorexia shares many traits with bulimia. CONCLUSIONS: In their complex, data suggest and in-deep study aimed to a possible re-classification of EDs which would take impulsiveness in greater consideration. The differences in temperament and character traits may partially be responsible of the repression or discontrol of impulsive eating behaviours in different ED subtypes.