Funding outcome

Approximately one million Canadian girls and women struggle with an eating disorder (e.g., out-of-control eating, restrictive eating) or serious concerns about their body image. These problems typically begin during adolescence to early adulthood and are often accompanied by depressed mood, which always make things even worse. To better prevent and treat these problems, it is important to understand why and in whom these two conditions, problematic eating and depressed mood, occur together before they turn into full-blown disorders. Scientists think that the way people think about themselves can make certain mental and behavioral problems more likely to happen. For example, if one thinks too much about the negative things or too little about the good things about oneself, it might make them more likely to feel depressed. Similarly, thinking too much about the negative things about one's body image (e.g., I am too fat) might make one more prone to problematic eating behaviors. We want to find out more about how thinking about oneself is related to problematic eating accompanied by depressed mood. We will study ~100 cisgender young women who have problematic eating behaviors, depressed mood, or both. We will look at participants' brain activity when they engage in negative thoughts about themselves. We will see if engaging too much in different types of negative thoughts about oneself (e.g., thoughts related or unrelated to body image) is connected to eating problems, or depressed mood, or both. This knowledge will inform how we can help girls and young women alleviate these problems, e.g., by changing their negative thoughts about themselves, before their problems get worse and turn into full-blown disorders.