Body image and self-concept in adolescent girls [R]

Anorexia Nervosa has been recently recognized as one of the most common chronic illnesses that affects the female adolescent population today. Although there has been an abundance of research into eating disorders in a variety of fields, significant limitations within the research still exist. Since very early descriptions of the disorder, self-concept and body image have been identified as core components of the anorexia nervosa. However, research has been somewhat limited in that there have not been any consistent theoretical underpinnings for self-concept and body image within the eating disorders field. Furthermore, researchers have tended to adopt traditional inferential statistics and multivariate methods to assess the role of self-concept and body image. As a result there has been very little consistency in research results. The current paper summarizes the significant findings from a doctoral thesis that attempted to address current limitations in self-concept and body image literature within the field of eating disorders.

Perceptions of family functioning and self-concept in adolescent anorexia nervosa [R]

Authors have highlighted the importance of the family for the development of positive self-concept and identity, not only in mental health research but also in various developmental and social psychology fields. With the increase in the incidence and prevalence of eating disorders in Australia and around the world, some researchers have attempted to understand how aspects of family functioning affect the onset and maintenance of the chronic illness, particularly for younger patients who are still undergoing drastic psychological changes and development. This study attempted to bridge gaps in the literature examining functioning and dyadic relations in families affected by eating disorders. More specifically, this study compared the perceptions of mothers, fathers and daughters about general family functioning to determine whether any discrepancies between the perceptions of family and how these affect self-concept in adolescent girls with anorexia nervosa.

Educational and mental health implications of the multidimensional model of the self-concept for adolescent girls : comparison of clinical and non-clinical samples

The importance of a positive self-concept as an educational outcome and a facilitator of other desirable outcomes are well established within the education research field. Although the multidimensional and hierarchical model of the self-concept is widely accepted within the educational psychology, this perspective is not widely used within the mental health research. Hence, the purpose of the present investigation is to compare the psychometric properties of the short version of the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQII-S) based on responses by a large sample of female adolescent high school students (N= 829) and a clinical sample of adolescent girls who have been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (N= 75). The well-established psychometric properties of the longer version of the SDQII generalise well to both samples of adolescent girls, and analyses provided good support for the invariance of the factor structure across the two samples. Furthermore, analyses employing new structural equation modelling approaches to comparing the latent mean differences indicated that there were differences (although surprisingly small) between the two groups that were generally consistent with a priori predictions. The important educational and clinical implications of these results are discussed.

Adolescent anorexia nervosa and self-concept [R]

Anorexia nervosa is an intriguing psychiatric disorder that is becoming a significant public health issue for adolescent girls around the world. Despite the proliferation of research and literature in the field, particularly concerning the aetiology, incidence and treatment for the disorder, little is understood about the aetiology of the disorder in the adolescent population. Researchers have suggested that low self-concept is one of many risk factors for eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa. Despite this, significant questions still remain about the relationship between self-concept and the severity and incidence of anorexia nervosa in adolescent girls in Australia. The pertinence of self-concept is undeniable due to its relevance to the personal and societal issues that exist in our society. This paper presents analyses of the multidimensional self-concepts of sixty-five adolescent girls with anorexia nervosa, and explores the relationships that exist between the distinct dimensions of the self-concept and eating disorder symptomotology.

The Role of the Family in Shaping Self-Concept and Cognitive Styles in Hungary

The project studied the perception of parenting styles and their relation to self-development, cognitive styles, and individualisation in adolescence. Typical parenting styles of mothers and fathers were studied in five different maternal and paternal parenting backgrounds: warm authoritarian, warm democratic, cold neglectful, cold authoritarian, and neutral. Perception of different styles of parenting (for fathers: authority, 'maintaining distance' behaviour, reciprocity, enhancing self-reliance; for mothers: authority, unpredictable behaviour, mutual trust, achievement orientation, and enhancing self-reliance) were analysed in each group using the newly developed Hungarian Parenting Questionnaire (Sallay & Munnich, 1999). This questionnaire has a theoretical basis in the ideas of Harvey (1966, 1967), where the socialisation process is combined with self-development. This categorisation of paternal and maternal parenting backgrounds enabled Sallay to explore and describe in detail how diverse parenting styles contribute to self-development, the development of cognitive complexity, and individualisation. The results show that diverse parenting by mothers and fathers produces differing impacts in nuclear and divorced families and for males and females, taking into consideration such self-components as physical, active, psychological (capabilities, personality, emotions, roles, preferences), social and reflective selves. Cognitive self-complexity varied according to parenting styles and genders: maternal and paternal parenting proved to have the most significant impact on self-complexity in a warm, democratic family. With respect to individualistic tendencies, adolescent boys were most individualistic in a cold, neglectful paternal background in nuclear families as compared to other paternal and maternal family backgrounds and to females.