Determining the Feeding, Eating, and Emotional Disturbances in Children with Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder | Chapter 2 | Emerging Challenges in Agriculture and Food Science Vol. 6

ARFID, or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, is a relatively recent diagnosis. The Stanford Feeding Questionnaire (SFQ), a picky eating evaluation instrument, was used to determine whether or not children with ARFID differed from control children in terms of emotional issues unrelated to eating or non-feeding. 98 control children and 50 ARFID kids were compared. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), and Sensory Responsiveness Questionnaire were completed by the parents (SRQ). The SFQ had 12 questions for problematic eating-related behaviours in children (SFQ-ARFID Scale), and additional 15 items for issues with parental feeding (SFQ-PFP Scale). These two subscales received validation for use as screening measures to determine the level of parental feeding issues and the severity of the children's eating habits (the SFQ-ARFID Scale) (the SFQ-PFP Scale). The results showed that children with ARFID had substantially higher SFQ-ARFID and SFQ-PFP Scale scores than did controls. Children with ARFID reported lower SRQ-Hedonic scores, greater SDQ-Total-Difficulties, and higher SDQ-Internalizing-Difficulties scores as compared to controls. In terms of separating children with ARFID from control children, the SFQ-ARFID Scale performed the best (area under the receiver operating characteristics curve = 0.939, 95 percent CI, 0.895-0.983, p 0.001). These results imply that, in children with ARFID compared to controls, there are more eating-related issues and emotional disturbances in addition to an increase in parental feeding issues.

The purpose of this study was to determine if a clinical diagnosis of ARFID could be supported by the use of the SFQ subscales measuring problematic eating in children (SFQ-ARFID Scale) and problematic feeding behaviours in parents (SFQ-PFP Scale). It also looked to see if there would be any differences between ARFID children and control kids in terms of their general mental state, including several particular domains (anxiety, sensory modulation), which had previously been demonstrated to be more severe in ARFID children.

Author(s) Details:

Sharon Iron-Segev,

The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, School of Nutritional Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot - 7600001, Israel and  Peres Academic Center, School of Nutritional Sciences, Rehovot - 7610202, Israel.

Danielle Best,

The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, School of Nutritional Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot - 7600001, Israel.

Shani Arad-Rubinstein,

Pediatric Psychosomatic Department, Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer - 5262000, Israel.

Martin Efron,

Pediatric Psychosomatic Department, Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer - 5262000, Israel.

Yaffa Serur,

Pediatric Psychosomatic Department, Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer - 5262000, Israel.

Hadar Dickstein,

Pediatric Psychosomatic Department, Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer - 5262000, Israel.

Daniel Stein,

Sackler Faculty of Medicine Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv - 6997801, Israel.

Please see the link here: https://stm.bookpi.org/ECAFS-V6/article/view/7560