INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this thesis is to question what happens to these two concepts in adolescent girls with subclinical vulnerability to anorexia nervosa.
Anorexia nervosa is approached as a mental illness of the “eating disorder” type. It mainly concerns women since, according to Hoecke (2006) and Vibert (2015), 90% of anorexics are women.
The period of adolescence was chosen as a period of extreme vulnerability to anorexia nervosa because of the many changes (bio-psycho-social) and disturbances it brings. Indeed, according to Keski-Rahkonen, Raevuori & Hoeck (2008) the pathology particularly concerns adolescents with a peak at the age of 16.
The developmental model of anorexia by Connan & al. published in 2003 is particularly enlightening about the causal link between this pathology and this period of life by offering an explanation on the representation of adolescence, marked by the psychic and bodily transformations due to puberty, as a period at risk in the development of Anorexia Nervosa (AN).
Obsessive preoccupation with body shapes is a symptom frequently associated with AN and many studies have shown the poor level of intimacy experienced in this illness.
The relationship to the body is both the way a person perceives and represents their body, and the satisfaction/dissatisfaction felt with it.
As regards the notion of intimacy, it can be defined here as the ability to give and receive care from the other while maintaining one’s sense of self.
The idea of this study is to think about food disturbances before the chronic installation of the pathology by using the model of Treasure & al. (2014) giving a staging ranging from “high risk” to “severe enduring illness”.
The objective is therefore to explore the relationship to the body and intimacy in adolescents with subclinical symptoms of anorexia nervosa, making them all the more vulnerable to the development of the pathology.
METHOD: In order to meet the objective of the study, the recommended method was to collect the responses of teenage female volunteers, aged between 14 and 22, through an online questionnaire published on the LimeSurvey platform.
This questionnaire includes 4 scientifically validated tools (Q-EDD, EDI-2, BES & EPSI) coupled with a questionnaire on proxemia distance specifically developed for the study. A correlational study was then done using Student’s t-tests on the JASP software.
All the recommendations were of course respected (free and informed consent of the adolescent and her parents if she was a minor, anonymisation of the results, etc.).
RESULTS: For relationship to the body, the results showed a no significant difference between the total score of adolescents vulnerable to anorexia nervosa and those without signs of anorexia nervosa.
However, we found that adolescents vulnerable to anorexia nervosa have more difficulty (total score on the intimacy and proxemics questionnaires were higher) with intimacy and acceptable physical distance from a third party than adolescents who do not show signs of anorexia nervosa.
DISCUSSION: This study therefore allowed us to see the difficulties that adolescent girls with vulnerabilities to anorexia nervosa experience with respect to intimacy, to self and to others, as well as the important need for physical distancing that these young women may feel.
In comparison, adolescents without vulnerabilities to anorexia nervosa have significantly less difficulty with these dimensions.
Furthermore, the study did not allow us to observe significant differences between these two groups on the dimension of the relationship to the body.
It would be interesting, in the future, to carry out this study on a larger sample in order to verify the results obtained but also to establish recommendations for detecting and treating these difficulties in subclinical adolescent girls before the disease appears.
SEVERAL KEYWORDS: Anorexia nervosa – Adolescence – Subclinical population – Intimacy – Relationship to the body.
WORDS I HAVE LEARNED: Hence… = d’où…; Mainly = Principalement; Enduring illness = maladie persistante; Sample = échantillon.
REFERENCES: Connan, F., Campbell, I.C., Katzman, M., Lightman, S.L. & Treasure J. (2003). A neurodevelopmental model for anorexia nervosa. Physiology and Behavior, 79(1), 13-24.
Hoek, H. W. (2006). Incidence, prevalence and mortality of anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 19(4), 389‑394.
Keski-Rahkonen, A., Raevuori, A. et Hoek, H-W. (2008). Chapter 4 : Epidemiology of eating disorders: an update. In : S. Wonderlich, J. Mitchell, M. Dezwann & H. Steigner (ed.)., Annual review of eating disorders, 66-76. Floride, USA : CRC Press.
Treasure, J., & Schmidt, U. (2013). The cognitive-interpersonal maintenance model of anorexia nervosa revisited: a summary of the evidence for cognitive, socio-emotional and interpersonal predisposing and perpetuating factors. Journal of eating disorders, 1(1), 13.
Vibert, S. (2015). Les anorexies mentales. Paris, France : Presses Universitaires de France.