At EDAC we are committed to making research accessible. Our Plain Speaking Summaries include plain language text on published papers and an interview with the authors. In this Plain Speaking Summary Dr Emy Nimbley introduced her paper that was published in 2023 and is interviewed by an Ellen Maloney, EDAC peer researcher.

Paper Synopsis

The full paper can be found here.

Aims

A lot of research has focused on establishing an overlap between autism and eating disorders, particularly anorexia, however not a lot of research has focused on understanding why there is an overlap. Early work has pointed towards a range of factors that may help explain why Autistic people develop anorexia nervosa (AN), including emotion factors, social difficulties and sensory differences. Building on this, the current study looked to explore social and sensory factors in Autistic and non-Autistic adults with AN by understanding how these factors are experienced and felt to be linked with their eating disorder.

Key Findings

While there were some similarities between Autistic and non-Autistic groups,



there were notable differences in experience of social and sensory factors. For example, while both groups felt that their sense of self was linked with social factors, Autistic people felt this stemmed from feeling ‘defective’, while non-Autistic people linked this more with social comparisons and inadequacy. Sensory processing was felt to be a core and lifelong difficulty in Autistic people, and strongly linked with their experience of developing their eating disorder, while for non-Autistic people this was felt to be more of a consequence of their eating disorder.

Method

Adults with anorexia and their parents were interviewed online at the same time. This was because the study wanted to draw on multiple perspectives, and by drawing on these at the same time, participants could share and make sense of their experiences together. We also wanted to have a developmental perspective, discuss

📌 Plain Speaking Summary: Ellen Maloney interviews Emy Nimbley on an IPA analysis of social and sensory differences in Autistic and non-autistic individuals with anorexia and their parents (Nadaun)
🏢 Eating Disorders and Autism Collaborative (EDAC)
📍 Nadaun