PSYCHOSOCIAL RISK FACTORS FOR EATING DISORDERS: A REVIEW AND SOME CONSIDERATIONS FOR PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

Identifying risk factors is esential to develop strategies for prevention and to guide effective interventions for eating disorders (ED). The purpose of this review is to examine some socicultural, contextual and psychological factors that have proved to increase the risk to develop an ED, with special attention to findings from longitudinal prospective studies. All factors linked with being exposed to the sociocultural idealization of thinnes in women and the pressure to attain it (media exposure, pressures for thinnes, thin-ideal internalization, thinnes expectancies) are riskfactors that can predict increasing in body dissatisfaction levels, use ofdiets o bulimic symptoms, in adolescent and young women. Some personality factors (petfectionism, negative emotionality, depressive symptoms. low self-steem, impulsivity/negative urgency), as well as some maladaptative parental behaviors, and peers with similar worries and strategies, have been shown to predict the development of eating disorders symptoms. We conclude with some suggestions to consider in the preventive and clinic i nterventions.