OCD, OCPD, OCPT and EDs - perfectionism and eating disorders

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is different from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and is defined as 'a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfection, mental and interpersonal control'. OCPD is associated with eating disorders (EDs) before, during and after they develop but it can be difficult to retrospectively measure people's OCPD in childhood before they developed an ED. A team of researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry in London developed the Childhood Retrospective Perfectionism questionnaire (CHIRP) and surveyed 246 people with an eating disorder, 93 informants (close friends or family members of the people with EDs), and 89 healthy controls. The CHIRP questionnaire was found to be reliable compared to the informants' memories of the ED group as children and interviews with the ED group themselves. The participants with EDs showed more experience of childhood OCPD than the control group and the more symptoms of OCPD people had had in childhood the worse their eating disorder symptoms were.

Southgate, Laura ... [et al] - The development of the Childhood Retrospective Perfectionism questionnaire (CHIRP) in an eating disorder sample European Eating Disorders Review November-December 2008, 16(6), 451-462