Self-disgust in eating disorders: a review of the literature and clinical implications

Eating disorders (EDs) are rare, but life-threatening, mental health problems that often have their onset during childhood or adolescence and most commonly affect females. This chapter reviews the theoretical and the empirical literature of the application of disgust to EDs. It argues that disgust is a neglected emotion in clinical approaches to EDs. Due to a growing interest in disgust over recent decades, numerous measures have been developed to understand this particular emotion further. The Disgust Sensitivity Questionnaire (DSQ) focuses on food contamination, and has been extended to create the Disgust Scale (DS). Within the research literature, there has been much debate over the potential role of adverse childhood events that link to EDs. Holman makes an important point about recent trends in ED research that have started to locate the basis for their understanding within the individual and tend to either downplay or ignore more psychological/social explanations.