Portfolio of Academic, Clinical and Research Work Submitted in Fulfillment of Psych.D in Clinical Psychology.

This study aimed to extend beyond investigations of sexual abuse alone, toward a consideration of how other forms of abuse, and a general concept of abuse and neglect severity, might be implicated in eating disorders. It was suggested that Models of victimization might provide a framework in which all forms of abuse and neglect may contribute to eating disorders by the influence of traumatic early experiences on the development of ‘victimized beliefs’. The study examined the incidence of abuse and neglect histories and of victimised beliefs in one hundred and twenty-seven women both with eating psychopathology and without, drawn from normal and clinical sources. Links to eating psychopathology generally and to bulimic type behaviours specifically were evaluated. The association of abuse and neglect and of victimised beliefs in accounting for the extent of eating psychopathology was considered. Higher levels of abuse and neglect, beyond sexual abuse alone, and of victimized beliefs were shown, yet little support was found for specific theories of the functionality of bulimic symptoms as a cognitive block to negative self beliefs