Psychological characteristics of eating disorders as evidenced by the combined administration of questionnaires and two projective methods: the Tree Drawing Test (Baum Test) and the Sentence Completion Test

The objective of this study is to examine psychological/psychopathological characteristics of eating disorders and their subtypes through a combined administration of questionnaires and projective tests. Three questionnaires (Eating Disorder Inventory – 2, Social Adaptation Scale, Southern California University Eating Disorder Inventory – Revised) and two projective tests (the Tree Drawing Test [TDT, Baum Test], and the Sentence Completion Test [SCT]) were administered to 126 female patients between the ages of 15 and 30 years, with eating disorders according to DSM‐IV criteria at our outpatient clinic, and to 54 sex‐ and age‐matched control subjects. The purging subtypes of eating disorders (anorexia nervosa – binge‐eating/purging type [ANBP] and bulimia nervosa – purging type [BNP]) were clearly differentiated from the controls, both by the questionnaires and the projective tests. Compared with the controls, ANBP/BNP showed more problematic profiles across the three questionnaires, drew smaller and poorer trees in TDT to a more left location on the drawing paper, and gave fewer positive, and more negative responses in SCT. In contrast, few significant differences were found between anorexia nervosa – restricting type (ANR) and the controls, and between ANBP and BNP. As a trend, however, ANR was consistently located between the controls and ANBP/BNP across the whole questionnaires and projective tests.