Buying-shopping disorder, emotion dysregulation, coping and materialism: a comparative approach with gambling patients and young people and adolescents

OBJECTIVE

The comorbidity between gambling disorder (GD) and buying-shopping disorder (BSD) has led to explore the core features that could be interacting between them. The main aim of this study was to examine the differences in both conditions considering emotion dysregulation, coping and materialism, as well as the relationship between these variables and their interaction with age and sex.

METHODS

A community sample (n = 281 adolescents) and a sample of individuals with GD (n = 31) was compared. Both samples were split into a group with BSD and a group without it.

RESULTS

The prevalence of participants who met the criteria for BSD was higher in the GD sample than in the community sample; the GD sample also presented higher values in the psychological variables studied. In the community sample group, positive associations were found between BSD severity and materialism and emotion dysregulation levels. In the GD sample, BSD severity was higher for participants who reported higher levels in materialism and lower scores in coping strategies. Variables impacted BSD severity differently according to sex and age covariates.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of the interaction of the variables could be useful to design prevention and treatment approaches addressed to specific groups of age and sex. KEY POINTS Buying-shopping disorder (BSD) has been compared in clinical and community samples. The clinical sample was constituted by Gambling disorder (GD) patients. The variables emotion dysregulation, coping and materialism have been considered. Variables impacted BSD severity differently according to sex and age covariates.

Is food addiction a predictor of treatment outcome among patients with eating disorder?

OBJECTIVES

The study aimed to examine whether food addiction (FA) was associated with greater severity in both binge eating disorders (BED) and bulimia nervosa and, therefore, to determine if FA was predictive of treatment outcome.

METHOD

Seventy-one adult patients with bulimia nervosa and BED (42 and 29, respectively) participated in the study. FA was assessed by means of the Yale Food Addiction Scale.

RESULTS

The results confirmed a high prevalence of FA in patients with binge disorders (around 87%) and also its association with a greater severity of the disorder (i.e., related to an increased eating psychopathology and greater frequency of binge eating episodes). Although FA did not appear as a predictor of treatment outcome in general terms, when the diagnostic subtypes were considered separately, FA was associated with poor prognosis in the BED group. In this vein, FA appeared as a mediator in the relationship between ED severity and treatment outcome.

DISCUSSIONS

Our findings suggest that FA may act as an indicator of ED severity, and it would be a predictor of treatment outcome in BED but not in BN.

Response trajectories of gambling severity after cognitive behavioral therapy in young-adult pathological gamblers

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

The significant increase in the prevalence of gambling disorder (GD) among young adults in recent years has attracted interest in determining therapeutic efficiency in this sector of the population. The aim of this work was to estimate the response trajectories of gambling severity during the six-month follow-up after a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program in young adult patients and to identify the main variables associated with each trajectory.

METHODS

The sample included n = 192 patients, aged 19-35 years old, seeking treatment for GD. Response trajectories were identified through latent class growth analysis.

RESULTS

Three trajectories emerged: T1 (n = 118, 61.5%), composed of patients with severe GD at pre-treatment and good evolution to recovery; T2 (n = 62, 32.3%), with patients with moderate-high GD affectation at baseline and good evolution to recovery; and T3 (n = 12, 6.3%), with participants with severe baseline GD severity and poor evolution after CBT (Abbott, 2019). The highest risk of poor therapeutic outcomes was related to lower social index positions, high emotional distress, high scores in harm avoidance and low scores in self-directedness.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Differences in the response trajectories at short-term follow-up after CBT reveal heterogeneity in the samples including young and young-adult GD patients. Patients' phenotype at baseline should be considered when developing efficient, person-centered intervention programs, which should comprise strategies aimed at increasing emotional regulation capacities, self-esteem and self-efficacy, with the aim of avoiding relapses in the medium-long term after therapy.