Effects of Interview and Role Reversal on Overweight Psychiatric Patients' Perceptions of Body Image

Karl E. Staven

Authors

Karl E. Staven Author

Keywords:

Overweight

Abstract

Overweight patients were asked to choose the body outline which most closely represented their own from a group of twelve body outlines. In a large psychiatric hospital, thirty in-patients who were labeled as having body image problems made two choices. One group of ten subjects did nothing between choices; one group of ten subjects described their bodies in response to descriptive questions; and the final group of ten subjects reversed roles with three different persons or objects and then responded to the same questions. Judges ranked each choice for accuracy. It was predicted that the rated accuracy would show greater improvement for the role-reversal subjects than for those in the control groups. The role-reversal subjects' accuracy did improve significantly (p < .05), while
neither control group changed significantly. There is a discussion of possible explanations for the role reversal's effectiveness in this study.

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Effects of Interview and Role Reversal on Overweight Psychiatric Patients' Perceptions of Body Image

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