Understanding Emotion Regulation in Eating Disorder Recovery

Abstract

Deficits in emotion regulation and heightened negative affect have been observed across eating disorder diagnoses and are hypothesized to contribute to the maintenance of eating psychopathology. However, the extent to which emotion regulation deficits and elevated negative affect continue to persist after the cessation of eating psychopathology remains unclear despite the emergence of several novel treatments that have been designed to target emotion regulation deficits and negative affect in eating disorder populations. The purpose of this study was to determine whether individuals in recovery from eating disorders experience emotion regulation deficits and heightened negative affect compared to those with active eating disorders and those without current or past eating disorders. Participants included 269 individuals with active eating disorders (AED), 58 participants in recovery from eating disorders (RED), and 143 participants without past or present eating disorders (COMP) who completed several online questionnaires. Results indicated that the AED group reported significantly more emotion regulation difficulties and greater negative affect compared to the RED and COMP groups, who did not differ form one another with regard to emotion regulation difficulties and negative affect. These findings support emotion regulation models of eating psychopathology and suggest that emotion regulation deficits and negative affect may improve with recovery from eating disorder psychopathology. Future research should examine facets of emotion regulation and negative affect using longitudinal designs to determine the temporal relationship between improvements in eating disorder psychopathology, emotion regulation, and negative affect in order to inform treatment interventions.