Anhedonia and emotional awareness: facts and perspectives in eating disorders

According to clinical reports, patients with eating disorders (EDs) are unable to differentiate and regulate emotional states. They are hypothesized alexithymic and lacking of emotional awareness. We investigate EDs capacity to experimente pleasure and levels of emotional awareness, in a comparative study. As expected, EDs show a global deficit of emotional functioning, with inability to identify and describe their own emotions, as well as an impairment in mentalising others' emotional experience, and an anhedonia. No relations between the duration of illness and the emotional dimensions were found. This trouble in regulation of emotions either follows the eating disorder and constitutes a lasting sequel, or appears to be a personality trait.