Sensation seeking: A personality trait characteristic of adolescent girls and young women with eating disorders?

The aim of the following study was to evaluate the role of sensation seekin g in eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia), taking into account the subty pes (purging versus nonpurging) and the concept of binge-eating disorder. T he study involved 141 adolescent girls and young women, aged 14 to 25 years who lived in the French speaking part of Switzerland (79 clinical subjects with eating disorders according to DSM-IV criteria, and 62 control subject s without eating disorders from the general population). All the subjects c ompleted the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS, Zuckerman, 1971). The results sh ow that subjects with bulimic behaviours characterized by recurrent episode s of binge-eating, whatever their exact diagnosis and subtype, do not signi ficantly differ from one another on the Sensation Seeking Scale. They all h ad higher scores than the control group especially on the 'Thrill and Adven ture Seeking' dimension. In contrast, restricting anorexics had lower score s on the Sensation Seeking Scale than the control group, especially on the 'Experience Seeking' dimension. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd a nd Eating Disorders Association.