Psychosocial adjustment in young adulthood of women who experienced an eating disorder during adolescence.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the impact of an adolescent eating disorder on psychosocial adjustment in young adulthood.

METHOD: A randomly selected sample of high school girls was assessed on a wide array of psychosocial and diagnostic variables twice during adolescence (n = 891, n = 810), and a stratified subset (n = 539) was assessed during their 24th year. Based on their history of psychopathology before age 19, participants were categorized into (1) partial- or full-syndrome eating disorder (ED; n = 36); (2) non-comorbid major depressive disorder (MDD; n = 95); (3) non-mood disorder without ED or MDD (NMD; n = 64); and (4) no disorder (ND; n = 138).

RESULTS

Discriminant function analysis identified a single significant function (variance = 57%) in which the ED group was significantly elevated (mean = 0.87, SD = 1.20) compared with the other three groups; the MDD (mean = 0.14, SD = 1.00) and NMD (mean = 0.17, SD = 0.99) group means were intermediary and differed from the ND group (mean = -0.40, SD = 0.95).

CONCLUSION

Despite apparent recovery of ED symptoms among most ED cases, women with a history of adolescent ED evidenced significant impairments in health, self-image, and important areas of social functioning. These findings underscore the clinical significance of adolescent ED.