The role of family factors in eating disorders

Abstract:Historically, eating disorders have been considered as a product of disturbed inter-personal relationships, with a large focus on the role of families or family functioning. Over the years, however, this focus has shifted to examining the role of intra-personal factors in the development of eating disorders (e.g., biological factors such as particular genes, impaired emotion regulation, perfectionism, low self-esteem). Importantly, both perspectives have the risk of stigmatization. Therefore, the transactional nature of risk factors (i.e., the interaction between inter- and intra-personal risk factors) is increasingly being emphasized within the domain of eating disorders. Within this transactional framework, the aim of the present chapter is to focus on the role of family factors. While it is not our goal to give an exhaustive overview of all possible family factors, we selected those family factors that have been studied the most and that have been most convincingly related to eating pathology or disorders. The evidence is divided into two broad categories: (1) general family factors including the role of attachment, family functioning, and childhood maltreatment and (2) family factors which are specifically focused on eating, weight, and/or shape including parental modelling; parental attitudes toward their children’s eating, weight, and shape; parental feeding strategies; and the impact of family meals. Importantly, not only the role of family factors as risk factors are considered, but the possible protective effects of the family are highlighted throughout the present chapter as well. Although the use of longitudinal designs across different age groups are the most powerful to investigate temporal relationships between family factors and eating disorders, studies with this type of design are scarce. Therefore, within the present chapter studies with different research designs and age groups are included and combined to give the most thorough overview of the current status in this field of research.

ISBN:9783030974169

Publication year:2023

Accessibility:Open