The effect of parental emotional abuse on the severity and treatment of PTSD symptoms in children and adolescents.

Background: Maltreatment by a primary caregiver is an important risk factor for the development of PTSD symptoms. Whereas meta-analyses indicate that parental emotional abuse is one of the most common forms of maltreatment, the impact of emotional abuse on PTSD symptoms and treatment effectiveness is still unclear, especially in children.

Objective: We aimed to investigate the impact of parental emotional abuse on PTSD symptom severity and effectiveness of trauma treatment in children and adolescents.

Depressive symptoms rather than executive functioning predict group cognitive behavioural therapy outcome in binge eating disorder.

Executive functions play an important role in mediating self-control and self-regulation. It has been suggested that the inability to control eating in Binge Eating Disorder (BED) may indicate inefficiencies in executive functioning. This study investigated whether executive functioning predicted cognitive behavioural therapy outcome in BED while accounting for other possible predictors: depressive symptoms, interpersonal factors, eating disorder psychopathology, and self-esteem.

Use of outcome measurements in clinical practice: How specific should one be?

Objective: Progress feedback is often measured with generic instruments that measure common symptoms and generic aspects of functioning. The current study aims to explore the relative usefulness of disorder-specific measures. We hypothesized that disorder-specific instruments reveal more improvement than generic instruments and that the addition of disorder-specific instruments results in better treatment outcomes.

Predictors of psychological outcome in patients with eating disorders: A routine outcome monitoring study.

Background: Identifying predictors of psychological outcome for patients with eating disorders may improve the effectiveness of treatment. Patients with different pre-treatment characteristics and symptoms may benefit from different therapies. This study aimed to identify potential predictors of treatment outcome in a large naturalistic cohort of patients with an eating disorder.

A common mineralocorticoid receptor polymorphism (I180V) interacts with life events in relation to perfectionism in eating disorders: a pilot study.

The stress response is regulated by the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). When the balance between GR and MR signalling is disturbed, one's capacity to cope with a stressful event is diminished. In this pilot study, we tested the hypothesis that an interaction between common variants in the MR (rs5522) or GR gene (rs41423247) and stressful life events influences perfectionism levels in a group of patients with an eating disorder (ED; n = 113).

Correlates and associations between weight suppression and binge eating symptomatology in a population-based sample.

Weight suppression (WS), the discrepancy between a person's highest ever and current body weight, has been found in a number of studies to be associated with the onset and maintenance of bulimia nervosa (BN). The current theories on the working mechanism hypothesize that individuals with BN might be caught in a (psycho)biobehavioral bind and suggest a circle of weight loss, weight suppression, weight gain, and binge eating that in theory should also apply to a broad spectrum of binge eating symptomatology. This study was intended to test the hypothesis that WS predicts current binge eating with a loss of control (BE+LOC) in a population-based sample.

Eating disorders in the general practice: a case-control study on the utilization of primary care.

Objective: To investigate primary care utilization between patients with an eating disorder (ED) and other patient groups, and between the ED subgroups anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN).

Method: The present study was an observational case-control study. In total, 167 patients with ED were matched with two control groups (with and without mental disorders).

Course and outcome of eating disorders in a primary care-based cohort.

Objective: To study the course and outcome of patients with eating disorder detected in primary care.

Method: General practitioners (GP's) provided information on the course and outcome of eating disorders in patients (n = 147) diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN) identified during a Dutch nationwide primary care-based incidence study. The research team determined the outcome based on the data provided by the GP's.

Urbanisation and the incidence of eating disorders.

The link between degree of urbanisation and a number of mental disorders is well established. Schizophrenia, psychosis and depression are known to occur more frequently in urban areas. In our primary care-based study of eating disorders, the incidence of bulimia nervosa showed a dose-response relation with degree of urbanisation and was five times higher in cities than in rural areas.

Time trends in the incidence of eating disorders: a primary care study in the Netherlands.

Objective: This Dutch epidemiological study used primary care-based data to examine changes in the incidence of eating disorders in the 1990s compared to the 1980s.

Method: A nationwide network of general practitioners, serving a representative sample of the total Dutch population, recorded newly diagnosed patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) in their practices during 1985-1989 and 1995-1999.

Results: The overall incidence of AN was stable (from 7.