Eating disorder and obsessive-compulsive symptoms in a sample of bulimic women: Perfectionism as a mediating factor

The present study aimed to investigate whether perfectionism mediates the association between obsessive-compulsive (OC) and eating disorder (ED) symptoms. Analyses were conducted using data collected among a national sample of eating disordered women diagnosed with BN or a subclinical variant of BN (N= 204). Each participant completed a series of self-report inventories on perfectionism, as well as OC, ED, and depressive symptoms. Higher ED symptoms were significantly associated with greater levels of perfectionism (p< 01) and OC symptoms (p< 05). As hypothesized, perfectionism significantly mediated the relationship between ED and OC symptoms, controlling for depression. Findings indicate that perfectionism may be considered a shared etiological or phenomenological factor in ED and OC symptoms.