Concerns about body shape are common among young women in Western cultures, and, in an extreme form, they constitute a central feature of the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. To date there has been no satisfactory measure of such concerns. A self‐report instrument, the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) has therefore been developed. The items that constitute this measure were derived by conducting semistructured interviews with various groups of women including patients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The BSQ has been administered to three samples of young women in the community as well as to a group of patients with bulimia nervosa. The concurrent and discriminant validity of the measure have been shown to be good. The BSQ provides a means of investigating the role of concerns about body shape in the development, maintenance, and treatment of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

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Alternative explanations for depression-related changes in thinking were examined. Forty-one depressed patients and 40 controls completed sentence stems involving social approval or personal achievement such as "If I could always be right then others would __ me." The view that depressive thinking primarily reflects a generalized increase in accessibility of negative constructs predicts patients will give more negative completions (e.g., "dislike"). Alternatively, depression could affect the interrelationships between constructs: Use in depression of schematic mental models implying closer dependence of personal worth--acceptance on success--approval predicts patients may give more positive completions (e.g., "like"). Results supported the latter prediction and suggest that depressive thinking reflects changes in high-level mental models used to interpret experience.

Bulimia nervosa is a disorder which has only recently been identified and described (Russell, 1979). It is a condition, found almost exclusively in young women, in which episodes of excessive uncontrolled eating are the central feature. Patients with bulimia nervosa usually present at normal weight because they compensate for the bulimic episodes in a variety of ways, such as by inducing vomiting, abusing purgatives and exercising extreme dietary restraint. In addition to these disturbed eating habits, patients with bulimia nervosa have attitudes to their shape and weight similar to those found in anorexia nervosa. They also present with a wide range of neurotic symptoms, particularly of a depressive nature (Russell, 1979; Fairburn & Cooper, 1984). It is generally accepted that these neurotic symptoms are usually a secondary reaction to the core eating disorder rather than of primary diagnostic significance (Fairburn et al, 1985; Cooper & Fairburn, 1986).