The Impact of Comorbid Depressive and Anxiety Disorders on Severity of Anorexia Nervosa in Adolescent Girls

Abstract

We examined the impact of comorbid depression and anxiety disorders on the severity of anorexia nervosa (AN) in adolescent girls. Adolescent girls with AN (N = 88) were divided into one group with and another group without comorbid disorders, and selected subjective and objective measures of illness severity were compared between the two groups. The comorbid group had significantly higher scores than the noncomorbid group for all four subscales and total scores of the Eating Disorders Examination as well as for all Eating Disorders Inventory-2 subscales, except for bulimia. The comorbid group also had significantly more suicide attempts and hospitalizations compared with the noncomorbid group. There were no significant group differences for the lowest ever body mass index, duration of AN symptoms, and age at AN onset. Our findings suggest that AN with comorbid depression and anxiety disorder is a more severe clinical variant of the disorder, especially with respect to severity of psychological symptoms and suicide risk.

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