The Role of Traumatic Experiences and Emotion Regulation Difficulties in the Development of Binge Eating Disorder
A Special Issue of Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643) belonging to the section "Nutritional Epidemiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 April 2027
Editors
Interests: eating disorders; eating behaviors; psychological correlates of patients with organic diseases; alexithymia; trait emotional intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: eating disorders; psychopathology; mental illness; addiction psychology
Interests: maltreatment; personality disorders; attachment; eating disorders; eating behaviours
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Binge eating disorder (BED) is one of the most prevalent eating disorders worldwide and represents a major public health concern due to its profound psychological, physical, and nutritional consequences. A growing body of research suggests that both traumatic experiences and difficulties in emotion regulation play pivotal roles in the onset and maintenance of binge eating behaviors. Exposure to adverse life events, including childhood maltreatment, interpersonal trauma, and chronic stress, has been consistently associated with an increased vulnerability to disordered eating, often via the disruption of adaptive emotional processing and handling of everyday difficulties. In this regard, binge episodes may serve as a maladaptive strategy related to managing overwhelming affective states, trauma-related distress, and negative self-perceptions. Concurrently, poorer emotion regulation strategies—such as impulsive responses, the avoidance of affective states, rumination, and limited access to adaptive emotional labelling—have been identified as key transdiagnostic mechanisms underlying BED psychopathology. This Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the role of traumatic experiences and emotion regulation difficulties in the development of BED, with particular emphasis on etiological pathways, psychological and neurobiological mechanisms, trauma-related vulnerability factors, nutritional and metabolic correlates, and evidence-based interventions. We welcome original research articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and theoretical contributions exploring the interplay between traumatic experiences, emotional dysregulation, stress reactivity, eating behaviors, and treatment outcomes. By integrating perspectives from clinical psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and nutritional science, this Special Issue seeks to advance current knowledge and promote innovative prevention and intervention strategies to manage binge eating disorder.
We thank all the authors who will join us as part of this Special Issue of Nutrients.
Dr. Nadia Barberis
Dr. Marco Cannavò
Dr. Giorgio Falgares
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- eating behaviors
- eating disorders
- binge eating disorders
- mental health
- well-being
- emotion regulation
- emotional dysregulation
- trauma and eating disorders
- emotional eating
- trauma
- emotional abuse
- trauma-related distress
- childhood maltreatment
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