[Tattoos and piercings in adolescents: family conflicts and temperament]

INTRODUCTION

The phenomenon of body art, such as tattoos and piercings, has ancient roots, rediscovered in Western society during the '70s. The aim of this research is to investigate the prevalence and the characteristics of tattoos and piercings among Italian adolescents of high school in Padua, with particular attention to family context and temperament.

METHODS

Some questionnaires about the presence or the wish of tattoos/piercings, smoke and alcohol use, familiar conflicts, and some temperamental features, such as novelty seeking, harm avoidance and reward dependence, have been administered to a sample of 829 students.

RESULTS

Tattoo and piercing's prevalence among adolescents was respectively 4% and 24%; 2.5% of the sample had both. Respectively 62% and 35% of the subjects expressed the desire of having a tattoo or piercing. A significant association has been found between tattoo/piercing's presence and smoke and alcohol use (p < 0.001). Subjects with tattoos and piercings, are more likely to have familiar conflicts and minor perceived support and they have higher scores on the novelty seeking scale. Those who wish a tattoo/piercing showed higher reward dependence.

CONCLUSIONS

This study confirms that tattoos/piercings are common among young people and it stresses the relevance of familiar and temperamental features, and the association between tattoos/piercings and some maladaptive behaviors, like smoke and alcohol use.

Expressive writing for high-risk drug dependent patients in a primary care clinic: a pilot study

BACKGROUND

Previous research has shown that expressive writing is beneficial in terms of both physical and emotional health outcomes. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of a brief expressive writing intervention for high-risk drug dependent patients in a primary care clinic, and to determine the relationship between linguistic features of writing and health outcomes.

METHODS

Participants completed four 15-minute expressive writing tasks over a week, in which they described their thoughts and feelings about a recent stressful event. Self-report measures of physical (SF-12) and psychological health (DASS-21) were administered at baseline and at a two-week follow-up. Fifty-three participants were recruited and 14 (26%) completed all measures.

RESULTS

No statistically significant benefits in physical or psychological health were found, although all outcomes changed in the direction of improvement. The intervention was well-received and was rated as beneficial by participants. The use of more positive emotion words in writing was associated with improvements in depression and stress, and flexibility in first person pronoun use was associated with improvements in anxiety. Increasing use of cognitive process words was associated with worsening depressive mood.

CONCLUSION

Although no significant benefits in physical and psychological health were found, improvements in psychological wellbeing were associated with certain writing styles and expressive writing was deemed acceptable by high-risk drug dependent patients. Given the difficulties in implementing psychosocial interventions in this population, further research using a larger sample is warranted.

Engaging teachers in an eating disorder preventive intervention

OBJECTIVE

This study evaluated the effectiveness at 1-year follow-up of a psychoeducational eating disorders preventive intervention implemented by specifically trained teachers.

METHOD

Participating teachers participated in a 5-week training program. One hundred forty-one female students attending nine classes at a vocational training school in Mestre (Venice) were assessed via a structured clinical interview (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders) and via the 40-item Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-40). Three classes were randomly selected to participate in a 6-week prevention program conducted by the trained teachers.

RESULTS

Our data show that a disturbing number of the girls who were asymptomatic at baseline had developed a full or partial eating disorder 1 year later. This was the case for 2 (5%) participants and 10 (11%) subjects in the control group. Subjects in the prevention group differed significantly from the control group at the 1-year follow-up. This was the case for their EAT Bulimia subscale scores, which showed a significant improvement. The intervention group also revealed a lower development of food restraint and pathologic body attitudes.

DISCUSSION

Given the sample size, our findings must be considered cautiously. However, they suggest that students can benefit from participation in a preventive intervention program conducted by teachers, and the benefits appear to be particularly pronounced for bulimic symptoms.

Media-portrayed idealized images, body shame, and appearance anxiety

OBJECTIVE

This study was designed to determine the effects of media-portrayed idealized images on young women's body shame and appearance anxiety, and to establish whether the effects depend on advertisement type and on participant self-objectification.

METHOD

Participants were 39 female university students. Twenty-four magazine advertisements comprised 12 body-related and 12 non-body-related products, one half of each with, and the other one half without, idealized images. Preexposure and post exposure body shame and appearance anxiety measures were recorded.

RESULTS

Appearance anxiety increased after viewing advertisements featuring idealized images. There was also a significant interaction between self-objectification level and idealized body (presence vs. absence). No differences emerged for body-related compared with non-body-related product advertisements. The only result for body shame was a main effect for time. Participants' body shame increased after exposure to idealized images, irrespective of advertisement type.

DISCUSSION

Although our findings reveal that media-portrayed idealized images detrimentally affect the body image of young women, they highlight the individual differences in vulnerability and the different effects for different components of body image. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the prevention and early intervention of body image and dieting-related disorders. (

Bulimia symptoms and risk factors in university students

We proposed a model for bulimic symptoms in a sample of 153 female university students attending the Faculty of Psychology, and determined the extent to which such symptoms could be explained by these variables. The following variables were measured during class time: the effects of aesthetic body modelling, the impact of teasing about weight and other aspects of physical appearance, body dissatisfaction, dieting severity, bulimic symptomatology, depression and self-esteem. The data underwent Lisrel analysis. The final model was similar to that initially proposed. The most important variables in emergent bulimic symptoms were the perceived pressure of aesthetic body modelling, teasing about weight, body dissatisfaction, self-esteem, depression and dieting. All of these play a role in eating disorder symptomatology through various pathways.

The emergence of dieting among female adolescents: age, body mass index, and seasonal effects

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this brief report is to document the emergence of dieting in adolescent girls across a 2-year period, and to establish whether the changes in dieting status were related to the girls' age, body mass index, or to seasonal effects.

METHOD

As part of a large-scale longitudinal study concerned with adolescent health and well-being, 478 girls, initially aged 12 to 16 years old, completed Strong and Huon's (Eating Disorders 5:97-104, 1997) dieting status measure on four separate occasions across a 2-year period.

RESULTS

A total of 273 girls (57.1%) identified themselves as nondieters when we first visited their school. Of those, approximately 20% indicated that they had begun to diet on one of the subsequent testing occasions. The emergence of dieting was observed to occur more in the 13- and 14-year-olds than in any other age group. Higher body mass index was not associated with the initiation of dieting as some underweight, and even very underweight girls, began to diet.

DISCUSSION

The emergence of dieting occurs in early adolescence and might be triggered by concerns about changes in body shape.

Social influences and female adolescent dieting

A large sample of female adolescents whose ages ranged from 12 to 17 years completed a battery of measures assessing their dieting status and their perceived psychosocial influences to diet. Higher levels of perceived influence from parents and peers were reported by girls who were dieting with a greater frequency. While age and social influences significantly predicted dieting status on their own, when examined together, the effect of social influence overrode that for age.

An experimental investigation of the influence of health information on children's taste preferences

Promotion of healthy diets often involves provision of information about which food types are most favourable for health. This is based on the assumption that the rational consumer will, other things being equal, choose the food that they know is healthier. However, health information may not always have a positive effect, since there is evidence that some people, particularly children, believe that healthiness and tastiness are mutually exclusive characteristics. To the extent that taste governs preferences and consumption, the characterization of a food as healthy could reduce its anticipated pleasantness. The present study tested the idea that a 'healthy' label would reduce liking for a novel drink. The results showed that the children rated a 'healthy labelled' drink as less pleasant and said they would be less likely to ask their parents to buy it than the same drink presented with control information. These results suggest that care may need to be exercised in promoting foods to children through an emphasis on health, unless the implications of healthiness can be rendered more positive.

Accounting for differences in dieting status: steps in the refinement of a model

OBJECTIVE

The overriding objective of this paper is to outline the steps involved in refining a structural model to explain differences in dieting status.

METHODS

Cross-sectional data (representing the responses of 1,644 teenage girls) derive from the preliminary testing in a 3-year longitudinal study. A battery of measures assessed social influence, vulnerability (to conformity) disposition, protective (social coping) skills, and aspects of positive familial context as core components in a model proposed to account for the initiation of dieting. Path analyses were used to establish the predictive ability of those separate components and their interrelationships in accounting for differences in dieting status.

RESULTS

Several components of the model were found to be important predictors of dieting status. The model incorporates significant direct, indirect (or mediated), and moderating relationships. Taking all variables into account, the strongest prediction of dieting status was from peer competitiveness, using a new scale developed specifically for this study.

CONCLUSION

Systematic analyses are crucial for the refinement of models to be used in large-scale multivariate studies. In the short term, the model investigated in this study has been shown to be useful in accounting for cross-sectional differences in dieting status. The refined model will be most powerfully employed in large-scale time-extended studies of the initiation of dieting to lose weight.

Psychological correlates of weight control among anorexia nervosa patients and normal girls

A study is reported that compared the responses of anorexic patients with those of two groups of non-patient adolescent girls formed by taking the most frequent and the least frequent weighers from a large sample of senior schoolgirls. Each subject completed a questionnaire which related to family conflict, self-esteem, self-presentation, behavioural control, and the criticism of eating. A MANOVA was performed, using scores for each variable and pairwise comparisons of the groups. Since the overall test was significant for comparisons between the patients and both of the non-patient groups, follow-up tests were carried out. These showed that the patients differed from the non-patients on a 'global' measure that involved all of the variables except family conflict. Self-esteem was the only single variable which produced significant differences between any of the groups, and distinguished the patients from the least frequently weighing group of non-patients.