The relationship between sexual abuse and eating pathology

✍ Scribed by Zlotnick, Caron ;Hohlstein, Leigh Anne ;Shea, M. Tracie ;Pearlstein, Teri ;Recupero, Pat ;Bidadi, Kahil

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 432 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0276-3478
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-108x(199609)20:2<129::aid-eat2>3.0.co;2-i

✦ Synopsis

Objective: The present study examined whether patients with histories of sexual abuse reported a higher degree of pathological eating behaviors and attitudes than a nonsexually abused control group. Method: Subjects, 134 psychiatric inpatients, completed the Eating Disorder Inventory ( E D ) to assess eatingpathology, and a questionnaire thatgathered information regarding sexual abuse experiences. Results: A logistic regression model found that a complex of ED1 subscales was significantly related to a history of childhood abuse. Exploratory analyses found that survivors of sexual abuse obtained higher scores on the ED/ subscales scores of Drive for Thinness, Interpersonal Distrust, Perfectionism, and lnteroceptive Awareness. Further, the mean score for sexual abuse survivors without an eating disorder on the majority of ED1 subscales was above established means for eating-disordered groups.

Discussion: These findings suggest that inpatients with a history of sexual abuse are likely to present with eating disorder symptomatology. 0 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between sexual abuse and eating disorders. However, contrary to clinical expectation, some studies have shown that the rates of sexual abuse in eating-disordered patients were comparable to those in other psychiatric patients (Pope & Hudson, 1992; Folsom et al., 1993; Welsh & Fairburn, 1994), suggesting that sexual abuse is not a critical factor in the development of an eating disorder.

Few studies have addressed the issue of whether sexual abuse survivors have a greater likelihood of pathological eating behaviors than those without such a history, independent