Anna Lavender | PubMed Health

PubMed2006

Obsessive-compulsive beliefs and magical ideation in eating disorders.

OBJECTIVES: Similarities in patterns of cognition and behaviour between patients with eating disorders and those with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have long been recognized, and comorbidity between these disorders has been shown to be high. However, there has been little investigation of the cognitive content shared between eating disorders and OCD. It has been suggested that a cognitive analysis of the overlap between the disorders may help to increase understanding of each, and have potentially useful clinical implications. The present study aimed to investigate the presence of obsessive-compulsive beliefs and magical ideation (MI) in a group of eating-disordered participants. METHOD: One hundred seventy-seven volunteers with a history of or current eating disorder completed the Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire (OBQ), the Interpretation of Intrusions Inventory (IlI) and the Magical ideation scale (MIS). RESULTS: Eating-disordered participants demonstrated levels of the beliefs measured comparable to or higher than those with OCD. CONCLUSIONS: The results supported the hypothesis that the belief domains investigated are relevant to eating-disordered individuals. This has interesting theoretical and clinical implications. Further research will be required to elucidate the role of these types of cognitions in the relationship between eating disorders and OCD, and to clarify their role in the psychopathology of eating disorders.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Rumination and future thinking in depression.

OBJECTIVES: Future thinking is an important domain of cognitive functioning, with reduced ability to imagine positive future events associated with hopelessness in depression and parasuicide. Rumination has been shown to exacerbate negative cognitive biases in depression, and to reduce likelihood estimations for positive future events. We examine the hypothesis that, in depressed patients, rumination would reduce the ability to imagine positive future events, whilst increasing the ability to imagine negative future events. METHOD: The ability to imagine positive and negative future events was assessed using the future thinking paradigm (MacLeod, Rose, & Williams, 1993). Depressed and nondepressed participants completed the future thinking task after being randomly allocated to either a rumination or distraction manipulation (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1993). Mood was measured before and after the manipulation. Participants also completed a standard verbal fluency task. RESULTS: In the depressed group, compared to distraction, rumination increased both negative and positive future thinking, although the effect was only significant for negative future thinking once baseline levels of hopelessness were controlled for. These findings are consistent with the prediction that rumination would increase negative future thinking, but inconsistent with the prediction that rumination would reduce positive future thinking. Previous findings that, compared to controls, depressed patients generated fewer positive future events were replicated. CONCLUSION: Ruminative self-focus leads to greater negative future thinking in depressed patients, further confirming that rumination exacerbates negative cognitive biases in depression. The relationship between rumination and positive future thinking was unexpected, but might potentially reflect a general priming of self-related information by rumination.

Adult↗