Italian Validation of the State Urge to be Physically Active- Questionnaire (SUPAQ-I) in Patients With Eating Disorders

Eating disorders (EDs) are characterized by a persistent disturbance of eating or eating-related behaviour resulting in altered consumption or absorption of food and leading to both life-threatening somatic complications and psychosocial impairment. Like most psychiatric disorders, EDs underlie pathogenetic mechanisms implying the interaction of neurobiological and genetic factors with the environment. EDs cause over 3000 deaths per year with worsening illness course and increasing chronic cases. For people suffering from EDs, quality of life is reduced and yearly healthcare costs are 48% higher than in the general population. Specifically, Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa report the highest mortality rates among EDs and psychiatric disorders in general. Following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, a concerning increase in both hospital admissions rates and outpatient visits was reported worldwide especially in paediatric populations. Along with this surge in ED cases, changes in symptoms manifestation were also reported, especially in terms of increase in restrictive eating, social media use, comorbid anxiety and depression symptoms and compulsive physical exercise. Food obsession, concerns about body shape and weight contribute to favour ED patients engagement in ritualised behaviours such as counting calories, frequent weighing and problematic physical activity (PA), in terms of frequency, duration and intensity. Notably, up to 80% of individuals with AN engage in voluntary compulsive exercise as a form of weight control. Simultaneously, on a neurobiological basis, starvation appear to heightened the urge to move and restlessness in AN. Current interventions for AN primarily focus on addressing various facets of eating disorders, but treatments exhibit limited efficacy in targeting physical exercise, despite the growing recognition of PA as a pivotal factor reinforcing eating pathology. The heightened restlessness activation in AN might also contribute to the overestimation of body size by enhancing proprioception. Thus far, there are just a few validated instruments to assess acute activity urges in ED patients, with the State Urge to be Physically Active Questionnaire (SUPA-Q), being the only one validated in this clinical population and covering several of the cognitive, emotional and specific behavioural aspects related to activity urges. The SUPA-Q, a 21-item self-report questionnaire, has demonstrated high consistency, reliability, as well as convergent, divergent and factorial validity. Sensitivity to change has also been tested (Cohen's d= 0.48). However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been only one validation study of the SUPA-Q. The objective of this study is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the SUPA-Q, and to test its validity in a clinical sample of patients with EDs.