Introduction: Psychosocial Risk Factors for Eating Disorders

During the past decades, several reviews about risk factors were published (e.g., Brytek-Matera & Czepczor-Bernat, 2017; Garner, 1993; Keel & Forney, 2013; Polivy & Herman, 2002; Striegel-Moore & Bulik, 2007). The present chapter is based on the very extensive and detailed reviews of Jacobi et al. (2004, 2018). Jacobi et al. (2004, 2018) built a framework to define risk factors (based on the work of Kazdin et al., 1997; Kraemer et al., 1997) and wrote a very exhaustive review about prospective risk factors and retrospective correlates of eating disorders (EDs) (Jacobi et al., 2004, 2018). In this introductory chapter, we start with the definition of risk factors, give an overview of the most important psychosocial risk factors for EDs, and link them to the etiological models of EDs. Finally, we introduce the different chapters of this section.