When is sexual abuse relevant to bulimic disorders? The validity of clinical judgements
✍ Scribed by Glenn Waller; Angela Ruddock; Christopher Pitts
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1993
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 508 KB
- Volume
- 1
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1072-4133
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
At a general level, reported sexual abuse appears to be associated with bulimic eating disorders. Clinicians need to judge whether such a history is relevant to individual cases. However, there are few guidelines for making such a decision. This study examines the symptoms and psychological functions associated with clinicians' judgements of relevance in a case series of bulimic women. Where abuse was reported and was judged to be relevant, subsequent measures showed that the women vomited more frequently and had a higher level of specific self-denigratory beliefs consequent upon the abuse. These findings provide concurrent walidation of clinicians' judgements, and offer some promise of standardizing clinical practice in deciding whether to attend to the consequences of reported sexual abuse.