The association between bulimic symptoms and reported psychopathology

Findings from the current study were derived from 50 bulimia nervosa patients participating in a short-term psychotherapy trial. Multivariate analyses revealed that patients with good and poor outcome were indistinguishable on most measures at pretreatment and that those who evidenced the greatest reduction in eating symptoms also experienced a marked improvement on a wide range of self-report personality and adjustment measures. Potentially important exceptions in which the poor outcome group had significantly higher pretreatment means included binge frequency and the Ineffectiveness scale of the EDI, with a trend toward higher scores on the Borderline Syndrome Index (p <.06). It is concluded that psychological disturbances reported by bulimia nervosa patients at initial testing should be interpreted with caution since they may represent secondary elaborations of chronic dietary chaos rather than more fundamental deficits in functioning.