This study examined how alexithymia subscales, depression and obsessive-compulsive personality(OCP) relate to eating disorder tendency (EDT) in non-clinical Japanese female adolescents.

A self-report questionnaire survey was conducted on 393 Japanese female adolescents (273 undergraduates and 120 college students, mean age=19.9yrs, SD=1.4).

A stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted, indicating that “difficulty in identifying feelings”(DIF) (β=.17, p< .01) and “difficulty in describing feelings” (DDF) (β=−.15, p< .01), which are factors of alexithymia, depression (β=.30, p< .001) and OCP (β=.14, p< .05) predicted EDT. Depression had the strongest effect on EDT, with DIF the second strongest. Surprisingly, DDT had a significantly negative effect on EDT.

First, prevention and therapy of eating disorder should focus on depression, difficulty in identifying feelings, and obsessive-compulsive personality. Second, one aspect of discontinuity between clinical and non-clinical females with high risk of eating disorder was implied: Non-clinical females with high risk of eating disorder may tend to describe at least superficial feelings frequently, if not deep or real feelings with introspection. Further, the possibility of describing may work as a preventive factor for non-clinical females with high risk of eating disorder against suffering from clinical eating disorder.

Table 1:

Results of stepwise multiple regression analysis predicting EDT