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Self-reported and performance based perfectionism in mothers of individuals with Anorexia Nervosa: a pilot study

Selbstberichteter und leistungsbasierter Perfektionismus bei Müttern von Personen mit Anorexia Nervosa: eine Pilotstudie

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Summary

Background

Perfectionism is implicated in the development and maintenance of Anorexia Nervosa and there is some evidence that perfectionism may be elevated in family members. However to date there are no studies investigating behavioural aspects of perfectionism in unaffected mothers.

Methods

Forty-one participants took part in this pilot study: 21 unaffected mothers of individuals with Anorexia Nervosa and 20 healthy control mothers. Participants completed two performance based tasks assessing perfectionism—a text replication task and a bead sorting task—along with self-report measures of perfectionism.

Results

No group differences were found between unaffected AN mothers and HC mothers on performance measures of perfectionism.

Discussion

The findings are discussed in relation to existing studies and clinical implications explored.

Zusammenfassung

Grundlagen

Perfektionismus wird mit der Entwicklung und Aufrechterhaltung von Anorexia Nervosa in Verbindung gebracht, und die Forschung deutet darauf hin, dass Perfektionismus auch bei Familienmitgliedern erhöht sein könnte. Dennoch wurden bisher keine Studien veröffentlicht, die verhaltensbezogene Aspekte von Perfektionismus bei nicht beeinträchtigten Müttern untersuchen.

Methodik

Es nahmen 41 Probandinnen an dieser Pilotstudie teil: 21 nicht beeinträchtigte Mütter von Personen mit Anorexia Nervosa und 20 gesunde Kontrollmütter. Die Probanden absolvierten zwei leistungsbasierte Tests zur Erhebung von Perfektionismus – eine Text-Reproduktions-Aufgabe und eine Perlen-Sortier-Aufgabe – und einen Selbstbericht zur Erhebung von Perfektionismus.

Ergebnisse

Es wurden keine Gruppenunterschiede zwischen nicht beeinträchtigten Müttern von Personen mit AN und Kontrollmüttern bezüglich des leistungsbezogenen Perfektionismus gefunden.

Diskussion

Die Ergebnisse werden in Bezug auf bereits vorhandene Studien und klinische Implikationen diskutiert.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the NIHR BiomedicalResearch Centre (BRC) for Mental Health atSouth London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust andKing’s College London.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK

    Samantha Lloyd, Ulrike Schmidt & Kate Tchanturia

  2. Eating Disorders National Service, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

    Ulrike Schmidt, Mima Simic & Kate Tchanturia

  3. Illia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

    Kate Tchanturia

Authors
  1. Samantha Lloyd
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  2. Ulrike Schmidt
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  3. Mima Simic
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  4. Kate Tchanturia
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kate Tchanturia.

Appendices

Conflict of interest

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and notnecessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Departmentof Health. SL is supported by an Institute of Psychiatry/Medical Research Council Excel- lence PhDstudentship. KL is supported by a Biomedical ResearchCouncil PhD studentship. US receives salary supportfrom the BRC. KT and SL would like to acknowl- edgesupport from the Swiss Anorexia Foundation.

Samantha Lloyd, Ulrike Schmidt, Mima Simic andKate Tchanturia declare that they have no conflict ofinterest.

Ethical standards

Full ethical approval for this study was granted bythe NRES Committee, London (12/LO/2013). Writteninformed consent was obtained from all participants. Allprocedures followed were in accordance with the ethicalstandards of the responsible committee on humanexperimentation (institutional and national) and withthe Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5).

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Lloyd, S., Schmidt, U., Simic, M. et al. Self-reported and performance based perfectionism in mothers of individuals with Anorexia Nervosa: a pilot study. Neuropsychiatr 29, 192–199 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-015-0161-y

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