Body image disturbance is considered one of the key psychopathological mechanisms of eating disorders, while existing questionnaires often assess only separate aspects of bodily experience.

The aim of the study was to develop and psychometrically validate a brief instrument for comprehensive assessment of body image disturbance in a clinical psychiatric sample. A cross-sectional study included 78 adults divided into groups: with eating disorders (n = 31) and without them (n = 47). The BIDS-10 scale (10 items, 4-point Likert scale) was developed. Reliability and structural, convergent, discriminant, criterion, and predictive validity were evaluated using factor analysis, Cronbach’s α, McDonald’s ω, Spearman correlations, Mann–Whitney test, and logistic regression. Depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed with the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 questionnaires.

The BIDS-10 demonstrated high internal consistency (α = 0.92; ω = 0.92) and a one-factor structure explaining 55.5 % of variance. Positive correlations were found with depression (rs = 0.616) and anxiety (rs = 0.326). Participants with eating disorders had significantly higher scores (p < 0.001; r ≈ 0.64). Higher total scores increased the odds of eating disorders (OR = 1.27), and ROC analysis showed high discriminative ability (AUC = 0.88).