Emotion Regulation and Mentalization in People at Risk for Food Addiction

Abstract

Researchers investigated the association among food addiction, difficulties in emotion regulation, and mentalization deficits in a sample of 322 Italian adults from the general population. All participants were administered the Italian versions of the Yale Food Addiction Scale (I-YFAS), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, the Mentalization Questionnaire, the Binge Eating Scale, and the Michigan Alcohol Screening Test. Of respondents, 7.1% reported high food-addiction symptoms (ie, 3 or more symptoms of food addiction on the I-YFAS). In bivariate analyses, high food-addiction symptoms were associated with more difficulties in emotion regulation and mentalization deficits. In the multivariate analysis, high food-addiction symptoms remained independently associated with mentalization deficits, but not with difficulties in emotion regulation. Our data suggest that mentalization may play an important role in food addiction by making it difficult for an individual to understand his or her own inner mental states as well as the mental states of others, especially when powerful emotions arise.

The Association among Default Mode Network Functional Connectivity, Mentalization, and Psychopathology in a Nonclinical Sample: An eLORETA Study

“…Furthermore, while MZQ total score was positively associated with DMN connections (i.e., the right and left medial frontal lobes), several psychopathological symptoms (i.e., interpersonal sensitivity, depression, and psychoticism) were negatively correlated with DMN connectivity. This is consistent with both theoretical assumptions and experimental data [2,5,27,29] suggesting that mentalization is strongly and negatively associated with psychopathology. Furthermore, our data are in line with previous studies showing that higher-order integrative mental functions, such as mentalization, may emerge from the dynamic activity of large neural networks [10][11][12][13], and that a disruption of a wide range of brain dynamic networks may be considered a risk factor for psychopathology [14][15][16][17].…”

“…Good psychometric properties have been reported in the validation study [27]. In our research, the Italian version of the scale was used [29] and the Cronbach α in our sample was 0.83 for the total score.…”

Food addiction and associations with mental health symptoms: a systematic review with meta‐analysis

“…Forty-four of the 51 studies utilised the standard version of the YFAS, of which six had been converted to and validated in the following non-English languages: Italian (n = 6) (20,40,(51)(52)(53)(54) , French (n = 3) (36)(37)(38) , German (n = 3) (15,64,67) , Spanish (n = 4) (17,49,50,73) , Arabic (n = 1) (76,82) , Chinese (n = 1) (42) and Turkish (n = 1) (71) . Three studies used the shorter version of the YFAS, referred to as the modified YFAS (mYFAS), which comprises nine questions rather than the standard 25 items (45,60,72) ; these studies were larger populationbased surveys.…”

Disordered eating behaviours and autistic traits—Are there any associations in nonclinical populations? A systematic review

“…Two studies assessed ToM in relation to problematic eating behaviours in adults (Bremser & Gallup, 2012;Innamorati et al, 2015). In one study, difficulties with ToM, measured by the Mentalization Questionnaire, a 15-item previously validated self-report, were found to be associated with binge eating and food addiction (Innamorati et al, 2015).…”

“…Two studies assessed ToM in relation to problematic eating behaviours in adults (Bremser & Gallup, 2012;Innamorati et al, 2015). In one study, difficulties with ToM, measured by the Mentalization Questionnaire, a 15-item previously validated self-report, were found to be associated with binge eating and food addiction (Innamorati et al, 2015). The second study examined ToM by the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, which is a computerized task, where participants are required to interpret a person's mental state based on pictures of different sets of eyes (Bremser & Gallup, 2012).…”