Citation

Duffy ME, Lieberman A, Siegfried N, Henretty JR, Bass G, Cox SA, Joiner TE. Int. J. Eat. Disord. 2020; 53(10): 1746-1750.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/eat.23352

PMID

33464582

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Research has established pairwise relationships between suicidal ideation (SI), low Body Trust, elevated agitation, and eating disorders, but knowledge of how these aspects relate in a single model is lacking. This study tested an indirect pathway with low Body Trust relating to severity of SI via agitation in a clinical eating disorder sample.
METHOD: Participants (N = 319; 92.8% female; 93.4% Caucasian; mean age 21.8 years) were adults currently receiving specialized eating disorder treatment (44.3% intensive outpatient or higher level-of-care) who completed online self-report measures of study variables. The PROCESS macro was utilized to test proposed pathways.
RESULTS: Low Body Trust was significantly directly associated with increased severity of current SI, both before (B = -.89, p <.001) and after (B = -.51, p =.001) accounting for the indirect effect through agitation, also significant (B = -.37, SE =.06, CI -.52 to -.26).
DISCUSSION: Perception of the body as unsafe may be related to agitation, and this intolerable sensation of trapped arousal could contribute to a desire to die. Future work should investigate these relationships prospectively to determine the relevance of Body Trust for assessment and treatment of suicide-related factors among individuals with eating disorders.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Adult; Female; Male; suicide; Young Adult; Suicidal Ideation; Self Report; suicidal ideation; Survival Analysis; Trust; Psychomotor Agitation; arousal; feeding and eating disorders; Feeding and Eating Disorders; brief agitation measure; depressive symptom index; eating disorder examination‐questionnaire; multidimensional assessment of interoceptive awareness