The aim of the following study was to evaluate the role of sensation seeking in eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia), taking into account the subtypes (purging versus nonpurging) and the concept of binge‐eating disorder. The 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 subjects without eating disorders from the general population). All the subjects completed the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS, Zuckerman, 1971). The results show that subjects with bulimic behaviours characterized by recurrent episodes of binge‐eating, whatever their exact diagnosis and subtype, do not significantly differ from one another on the Sensation Seeking Scale. They all had higher scores than the control group especially on the ‘Thrill and Adventure Seeking’ dimension. In contrast, restricting anorexics had lower scores on the Sensation Seeking Scale than the control group, especially on the ‘Experience Seeking’ dimension. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Objective. The aim of this study was to evaluate a French language version of the Adolescent Drug Abuse Diagnosis (ADAD) instrument in a Swiss

A good convergent validity emerges between the two assessment tools. The ADAD allows an evidence-based assessment and generally enables a better subject discrimination than HoNOSCA. HoNOSCA gives a less refined evaluation but is more economic in time and possibly more sensitive to change. Both assessment tools give useful information and enabled the Day-care Unit for Adolescents to rethink the process of care and of outcome, which benefited both the institution and the patients.

No abstract