Several psychosocial models have been proposed to explain the etiology of eating disorders and obesity separately despite research suggesting they should be conceptualized within a shared theoretical framework. The objective of the current study was to test an integrated comprehensive model consisting of a host of common risk and protective factors expected to explain both eating and weight disorders simultaneously in a large school-based sample of adolescents. Data were collected from 3,043 youth from 41 schools in the Ottawa region, Canada. (...) Working with interested school staff, validated self-report scales in the form of a questionnaire booklet were administered to participating students to assess several understood risk and protective factors common to both eating disorders and obesity. Anthropometric measurements of weight and height were taken at the end of the questionnaire administration period by trained research staff. Structural equation modeling with cross-validation was used to test the hypothesized model. Findings demonstrated that dysregulated eating was associated with both eating disorder and weight status with diet culture and emotion dysregulation directly associated with some of these disordered eating patterns. It equally pointed to how lifestyle made up of high sedentary behaviors, low vigorous exercise and varied eating patterns contributed to both emotion dysregulation and poor body image which subsequently affected eating issues and weight status simultaneously, signaling the complex interplay of psychosocial factors that underlie these concerns. This study provides evidence for an integrated psychosocial model consisting of socio-environmental, psychological, and behavioral factors may best explain the complex interplay of risk and protective factors influencing eating disorders and obesity. It equally highlights understanding the direct and indirect effects of some of the most salient risk factors involved in eating and weight-related concerns, including the strong effects of diet culture and stressors such as weight-based teasing, providing interventionalists evidence of important risk factors to consider targeting in eating disorder and weight-based prevention efforts. (shrink)

Should Soviet philosophy take a considered stand on the questions of transcendence and religion, this would entail a fundamental transformation in the Eest-West philosophical oppostion. But all human experience tends to show that a considered stand is the first step toward a genuine knowledge of the true nature of the world. Such a development would, obviously, be the end of Diamat as we know it and, eventually, the end of the ideological East-West conflict.

Classical Soviet Marxism-Leninism is in the process of dissolution, with some parts of the ideology being rejected, others retained in one form or another, and new components being adopted. At the same time, a wide-ranging pluralism of new objectives and forms of consciousness has emerged in Soviet intellectual life. Since both the motives for restructuring and also the braking effects acting on the process of perestrojka are significantly dependent upon intellectual and ideological developments, attentive observations of these developments is of (...) particular importance for the assessment of the evolutionary propects of the Soviet Union. At present the situation on the ideological-intellectual front can be characterized as follows:1. Although official changes in the ideology did not begin until 1989 they have caught up to the initial perestrojka in political and cultural life. 2. Perestrojka has continually waned in importance as an ideological by-word largely under the influence of Gorbachv''s new thinking which has turned attention to the dramatic history of the Soviet Union and the plight of the human individual in a society with few prospects for the future. 3. In philosophy the new textbook published in 1989/90 introduces a series of crucial innovations that put paid to a number of classical shibboleths of the Marxist-Leninist world view. 4. Academic philosophy has shifted more and more to a reexamination of the history of philosophy as well as to a reappraisal of pre-revolutionary Russian thought. 5. The critique of Stalinism has gradually given way to a critique of Marxist principles generally, and even Lenin has become the subject of criticism. 6. Fast on the heels of the new thinking and the ideological deconstruction come the voices of political orientations whose differences are so pronounced as to have warranted the compilation of an Atlas of ideologies. 7. The search for a new moral identity has concentrated on three sources: the reestablishment of links with classical Russian culture, the renewal of links with Europe, and the deep-seated need to commit oneself to some ideal for sacrifice. 8. The economic crisis has produced attitudes hostile to individual gain and speculation. 9. Given the nature of the Soviet crisis intellectual cooperation with the West has to take forms which promote the rekindling of a sense of all-human awareness of the transcendent and reinforce the experience of common humanity. 10. The establishment of all-European academic institutions designed in their very structure to engage in mutual cooperation could have a catalytic effect on the reconfiguration of Europe. (shrink)