Family functioning and psychological distress in a sample of mental health outpatients: Implications for routine examination and screening.

Rationale, Aims, And Objectives: Clinical and research evidence suggests that family functioning is an important variable in shaping psychological well-being, despite being often overlooked in the prevailing approaches to mental health. The aim of the present study is to examine the associations between psychological distress and family functioning in a sample of patients accessing a public mental health service.

Method: CORE-OM and FACES IV questionnaires were administered to 112 patients, and all the correlations between the scales and subscales were calculated.

Shared psychopathology in obese subjects with and without binge-eating disorder.

Objective: To investigate obese people with/without binge-eating Disorder (BED) in terms of shared psychopathological features pertaining to spectrum of eating disorders.

Method: One-hundred obese adult patients with a BMI > 30 kg/m(2) referred to an Eating Disorder Unit and/or hospital weight-loss programs were administered the BED Clinical Interview, the Eating Disorder Inventory, and the Structured Clinical Interview for Anorexic-Bulimic Spectrum, Self-Report.

Results: Twenty-seven subjects satisfied DSM-IV research criteria for current BED; compared to nonbingeing obese subjects, BED ones were characterized by greater weight-shape concerns influencing self-esteem (p = .

Relationship between bipolar illness and binge-eating disorders.

In this study we describe the frequency of eating disorders (EDs) in a group of bipolar (BP) patients. We evaluated a sample of 51 outpatients, diagnosed as having BP I disorder on the basis of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID). Each of these subjects was administered the Binge Eating Disorder Clinical Interview (BEDCI) to determine the presence of binge eating disorder (BED) or bulimia nervosa (BN).