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Alexithymia may explain the relationship between autistic traits and eating disorder psychopathology.

Author
Abstract
:

Autistic people are disproportionately vulnerable to anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders (ED), and within the general population, autistic traits correlate with ED psychopathology. A putative mechanism which may underpin this heightened risk is alexithymia, a difficulty identifying and describing emotional states which is observed in both autism and ED. In two experiments with independent non-clinical samples, we explored whether alexithymia might mediate the heightened risk of eating psychopathology in individuals high in autistic traits.

Year of Publication
:
2020
Journal
:
Molecular autism
Volume
:
11
Issue
:
1
Number of Pages
:
63
Date Published
:
2020
URL
:
https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-020-00364-z
DOI
:
10.1186/s13229-020-00364-z
Short Title
:
Mol Autism
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