Changes of body image and body awareness in eating-disorder and non eating-disorder patients after inpatient-therapy

Altered body image and body awareness have significant clinical implications not only for patients with eating disorders. We evaluated therapy-outcome including distortions in body image in 61 inpatients using two instruments assessing body image (FKB-20 Clement and L?we, and FBeK Strauss and Richter-Appelt ). Eating disorder subjects, as expected, showed the most severely disturbed body image with negative attitudes towards their own body and restricted body dynamics. While body image improved over all diagnostic groups after treatment, anorectic patients improved less than others. This finding confirms the clinical observation of the limited therapeutic influence on body image distortions in anorectic patients. Our results show, that the body image questionnaire FKB-20 discriminates well between healthy and psychosomatically diseased patients and is a suitable instrument for process- and outcome-evaluation.