Comments on: Parents, personality, and eating disorder symptoms

By: bek

bek — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:36:28 +0000

okay, now, wait, just to be clear. so the dad’s ability to resist frustration contributes to AN-R? interesting. and also his ability to maintain behavior that is rewarded? i can kinda see that. not totally sure. my dad and i were never close. he is passive and reserved to the extreme, as well as a very talented perfectionist. and a sex addict. so hmm.

By: Delving Into What Is Manic Depression | Depression & Self Help

Delving Into What Is Manic Depression | Depression & Self Help — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:24:21 +0000

[...] Parents, personality, and eating disorder symptoms « Grey Thinking [...]

By: imaginenamaste

imaginenamaste — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:46:28 +0000

That is really interesting–I read an article about this in one of my research classes. I’m not totally sure that I believe all of it as things vary, but I could definitely see how it could relate to me–and others! I think about how often my ED groups have gotten to issues with parents and other family!

By: Laura Collins

Laura Collins — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:43:09 +0000

I’m fascinated as well, but I think I come at this stuff differently.

Obviously, families will have clusterings of these traits genetically and this both complicates recovery and may possibly present opportunities to offer not just eating disorder recovery but also other benefits to a family to maximize their general happiness and relations.

But what this stuff is generally used for is different. It is often used to point fingers, to go on witch hunts, to confuse correlation with cause, and to create problems where none may have existed. A given family may only have one person with these traits or many. A family may have these traits in a very functional and helpful way, or in damaging ways. A family can use this knowledge to grow, or to despair.

So knowing this information about the population can be used for good or for ill, and it depends a lot what the clinicians and consumers are doing with it and why they want it. I would argue that this information about ourselves is important self-knowledge regardless of whether anyone in the family has a debilitating psychiatric disorder.

By: greythinking

greythinking — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:46:55 +0000

I thought the article was fascinating — and I agree that adding in the biological predisposition toward certain personality traits further enhances the correlation with the ED.

Several conclusions did reference the complexity of the various factors:

“….the role of parental personality traits on the emergence of EDs involves very complex family dynamics that are not detectable by linear analysis. In the present study, parental personality features were not direct stressors for specific personality or psychopathological issues. Nevertheless, the results indicate that some of the daughters’ features (eg, novelty seeking) may have been directly influenced by parental personality traits (eg, mothers’ self-directedness). This is consistent with previous studies of disturbed children and borderline patients, and with the ‘goodness of fit’ theories that explain mother-child personal interactions.”

Also interesting is that while only daughters without Asix I comorbidity were included in the study, parents with personality disorders were not excluded. Also interesting to note:

“Although approximately 80% of parents with daughters affected by ED have anxiety or minor depressive symptoms, most declared taht these were reactive to their daughter’s condition.”

Anyway, I’m sure you’d rather just read the article than have me quote the whole thing to you piece by piece I’m emailing you the PDF and would love to hear your thoughts!

By: Carrie

Carrie — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:52:02 +0000

Wow- this is very interesting. There is some research out there (don’t have it bookmarked on the laptop I’m using right now) that suggests that some of these personality traits are heritable, which would make both the parental links and the specific correlation to ED diagnosis rather clear. Both my parents are on the obsessive side and both are quite perfectionistic (although expressed rather differently in each parent!). That didn’t cause my eating disorder, but it also let many of my obsessive, perfectionistic traits get brushed under the carpet because they were quite normal in my family.

Would you mind emailing me the pdf if you have it? carrie at edbites dot com

Thanks!