DClinPsy Portfolio Volume 1 of 3 - University of Hertfordshire ...

If eating/weight control practices are viewed on a continuum, ‘healthy eating’ would be
at one end, followed by ‘dieting’, then by ‘unhealthy weight control behaviours/eating
disturbances’ (that do not meet clinical diagnostic criteria but may be sub-clinical cases)
and at the other end of the continuum are the eating disorders in the diagnostic manuals
(i.e. Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN) and Eating Disorders Not Otherwise
Specified (EDNOS). Disordered eating therefore comprises the unhealthy weight control
behaviours that do not reach a clinical diagnosis but include symptoms that are part of the
classification of the eating disorders. Researchers have used a variety of measures to
look for eating disorder risk which led to different operationalisations of the concept of
disordered eating/eating disturbances. With this in mind this study will consider
disordered eating by measuring eating disorder risk using the EDI-3.
The Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3) is the latest edition of a twenty year old test that
examines the ‘continuum model’ of eating disorders (Nylander, 1971). Thus it holds the
view that AN is the final stage of a continuous process beginning with voluntary dieting
and progressing to more stringent forms of dieting accompanied by progressive loss of
insight. The validity of the continuum hypothesis has not been settled, with some
researchers concluding that there are qualitative distinctions between true cases and subclinical
variants (Garner, Olmsted, & Polivy, 2004).
Disordered eating in Adolescence
By studying disordered eating behaviours in a non clinical population rather than looking
at individuals with a diagnosis of eating disorders, researchers have identified that the
consequences of disordered eating during adolescence may not be benign.
Early adolescence has been recognised as a vulnerable time for girls to develop
disordered eating because of the normative challenges associated with that period of
development, in particular, physical changes associated with puberty, increased desire for
peer acceptance and onset of dating (Smolak, Levine, and Striegel-Moore, 1996).
Therefore, studies have looked prospectively at adolescence to consider the longer term
consequences of disordered eating.
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