The effect of acceptance and nonacceptance based coping strategies on symptom severity in the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT)

Past research indicates that women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa primarily use two types of coping strategies: emotion-focused and avoidant-focused coping. The role of acceptance-based coping in relation to anorexia has been scarcely reviewed. This dissertation seeks to further examine primary coping strategies used by women with anorexia specifically by examining how acceptance-based coping affects women diagnosed with anorexia in relation to symptom severity on the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT). A second population of women at high risk for developing an eating disorder, high fashion models, will be examined to determine types of coping strategies utilized. The goal of looking at a population at high risk for developing an eating disorder is to potentially find specific coping strategies that may act as protecting factors from developing an eating disorder. This dissertation is both quantitative and qualitative and uses descriptive and comparative analysis. Results found that women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and high fashion models had no significant differences in coping strategies. Acceptance-based coping was found to play a role within the population of high fashion models. Those who utilized more acceptance-based coping had less symptom severity on the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT). A discussion of the implication of these results and recommendations for future theoretical and empirical efforts is presented.