Emotion recognition, alexithymia, empathy, and emotion regulation in women with anorexia nervosa

PURPOSE: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is associated with challenges in recognizing, understanding, and interpreting one’s own and other’s emotional states, feelings, and thoughts. It is unknown whether difficulties in emotion processing occur independently of common comorbid symptoms of AN and predict acute eating disorder characteristics. We aimed to examine emotion recognition, alexithymia, emotion regulation, and empathy in individuals with AN and to assess whether these predict eating disorder symptoms independently from comorbid symptoms. METHODS: Participants included 42 women with AN and 40 healthy control (HC) women between 18–30 years. Basic and complex emotion recognition was assessed with face photos and video clips. Alexithymia, empathy, emotion regulation, and comorbid symptoms (anxiety, depressive, and obsessive–compulsive symptoms and ASD traits) were assessed with self-assessment questionnaires. RESULTS: Participants with AN exhibited difficulties in basic and complex emotion recognition, as well as increased alexithymia, decreased empathy, and challenges in emotion regulation when compared to HCs. After controlling for comorbid symptoms, differences remained only in complex emotion recognition. Challenges in emotion recognition were associated with lower body mass index, and increased alexithymia was associated with increased eating disorder symptoms. Increased challenges in emotion regulation were associated with a shorter duration of illness, higher body mass index, and increased eating disorder symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Participants with AN displayed widespread deficit in emotion processing, but only challenges in complex emotion recognition occurred independently from comorbid symptoms. Deficits in emotion processing may contribute to the illness severity and thus could be an important treatment target. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III, case-control analytic study. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40519-022-01496-2.