The role of emotion regulation in the relationship between insomnia and eating disorders

Objectives: Emotion Regulation (ER) is the set of processes used for modulating the quality, intensity or duration of an emotion (Gross e Thompson, 2007). Several strategies (e.g. suppression of the emotions) have been demonstrated to negatively influence mental health (Aldao et al., 2010). Previous evidence indicate that poor sleep is associated to higher level of emotion instability and greater experience of negative emotions (e.g. Baglioni et al., 2010). Similarly, people vulnerable to eating disorders have been shown to experience intense negative emotions and to turn to food for up-regulating them (Polivy and Herman, 2002). Moreover, both people with insomnia and people with AN show personality features of emotional dysregulation and inhibition, social avoidance and affective liability (Van de Laar et al., 2010; Holliday, et al. 2006). It is thus possible that emotion dysregulation is one of the factors that promote the development of both insomnia and eating disorders or a factor that promote the comorbidity among them. Methods: Results of three studies will be presented. The first includes a community sample of 1019 female university students (Lombardo et al., submitted); the second (Lombardo et al., in prep.) includes a community sample of 568 female university students. In both studies valid and reliable questionnaires were used for assessing insomnia and eating disorders symptoms and emotion dysregulation. In the third study (Lombardo et al., in prep.) 105 female participants were enrolled and both self-report and physiological measures (facial EMG, HR, SCL) recorded. Results: Results of the first study evidence that people reporting insomnia symptoms also show higher disordered eating even after having controlled for depression. Results of the second study evidence that the use of suppression mediates the relationship between insomnia symptoms and eating restriction. The third study evidence that suppression is related to high rates of co-occurrence of insomnia, eating disorders, anxiety and depression symptoms. Moreover, the more severe simptomatology is also related to different psychophysiological responding to emotional stimuli pertinent or not with the main symptoms. Conclusions: The role of emotion suppression and the clinical implications of the relationships evidenced will be discussed.