Separation individuation process in adolescents with eating disorders and its impact on resilience

Purpose: The present study aimed to examine the relationship between eating disorders, resilience and the separation-individuation (SI) process in adolescents. Materials and Methods: The study included 49 adolescents with eating disorders and 126 adolescents as a control group. Control group did not have any psychiatric diagnosis or were diagnosed with conditions categorized under "neurodevelopmental disorders". K-SADS-PL-DSM-5 diagnostic interview was conducted with the case group. All adolescents in the study filled in self‐reported questionnaires. Results: When the adolescents in the case group were compared with the control group; having divorced parents, caregiving by relatives, having a history of anxiety and mood disorders comorbidity, parental eating attitude problems, history of traumatic experiences were found to be higher and school achievement was found to be lower. In the case group, separation-individuation subscales, including "need denial", "separation anxiety", "engulfment anxiety", "teacher enmeshment", and "rejection expectancy" were found to be higher compared to the control group. Resilience scores in the case group (37.00) were found to be significantly lower than those in the control group (48.00). In addition, there was a positive correlation between resilience scores and 'nurturance seeking' (r=0.364, p=0.01), and a negative correlation between resilience scores and ‘rejection expectancy' (r=-0.447, p