Alessandra Pokrajac-Bulian

POKRAJAC-BULIAN, ALESSANDRA - Participates in teaching courses in the field of clinical psychology. Since 2019, she leads a project supported by the University of Rijeka entitled “Risk and Protective Factors in the Development of Overweight and Obesity in Adolescence”.

She is involved in research on obesity, body image and various forms of eating disorders. Obesity research attempts to answer questions about the psychological difficulties and quality of life of obese adults, and in recent years, research has focused on the problems of obesity and eating disorders in adolescents. Researches are directed to understanding motivation to behavioural change and motivation to exercise, in people of different degrees of obesity and different morbidities, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Research on obese people focuses on understanding beliefs about the causes of illness, anxiety due to specific health problems, and anxiety and depression. She also researches various eating disorders, binge eating disorder, symptoms of restrictive and bulimic behaviour in adolescence and early adulthood, and eating disorders in athletes. The objectives of her research are to test assumptions about traits such as perfectionism, emotional dysregulation, shame, and guilt in the development of binge eating disorder. An important area of research is to understand the negative body image, its various aspects (e.g., cognitive, affective and behavioural) in adolescents of different nutritional status.

Academic portfolio (of the University of Rijeka employee) can be found here: https://portal.uniri.hr/Portfelj/Details/1054

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.hr/citations?user=d6ilwWEAAAAJ&hl=en

Web of Science: https://app.webofknowledge.com/author/record/2187500,34869785