**5. Conclusions**

Aside from these limitations, the results of our study indicate that an immature development of interpersonal relatedness can act as a negative prognostic factor of the longterm outcome of patients with eating disorders. This result implies that relational issues should deserve specific attention in eating disorders and indirectly supports the interest of family approaches for these patients. More generally, this study highlights the interest of a person-centered approach focusing on the subjective experience of patients. As Fonagy and Target (Fonagy and Target 2002) have outlined, the majority of studies do not explore the subjective experience and the psychological distress of patients, although this may be critically different among subjects. The investigation of the subjective experience can deepen our understanding of psychiatric disturbances as categorized by the DSM-IV and refine our prediction about treatment outcomes for a variety of different types of psychological disturbances (Fonagy 2004). This approach is also in line with the recommendations issued by the working group on personality disorders for the future DSM-V. The working group, arguing that personality psychopathology fundamentally emanates from disturbances in thinking about self and others, and that these features influence treatment strategies, has proposed to include an assessment of the levels of self (including identity and self-direction) and interpersonal functioning (including empathy and intimacy) to describe the personality characteristics of all patients, independently from the presence of a personality disorder (APA 2011). Professionals should carefully monitor interpersonal concerns when assessing eating disorder patients and should develop specific therapeutic strategies to handle the negative relational expectancies frequently experienced by these patients (Goodsit 1997).
