Eating Disorders and Self-Esteem

This review focuses on literature regarding the relationship between maladaptive eating behaviors/attitudes and body satisfaction, self-esteem, and sexual satisfaction. This chapter provides a brief overview of topic areas relevant to an understanding of eating disorder including an introduction to eating disorders, causes of eating disorders, and risks associated with eating disorders. Later sections will examine the relationship between self-esteem, body dissatisfaction, sexual issues, and eating attitudes in greater depth.

The current study focuses on maladaptive eating attitudes in general. However as the analysis of related variables may be extended to those with these disorders, this section begins with a brief overview pertaining to eating disorders. Polivy (2002) reported that eating disorders currently include the two prominent disorders of anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). While research consider these as two diagnoses as separate disorders, they each have core symptoms such as body dissatisfaction, ego deficits, and a preoccupation with food, weight, and shape, that do not distinguish one from the other. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth edition) (APA, 1994) states that AN includes the essential feature that the individual refused to maintain a minimally normal body weight, with fear of gaining weight, and disturbances in the perception of t

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questionnaires were used to obtain data. Findings were that bulimic patients reported more parental intrusiveness, maternal invasion of privacy, competition, jealousy, and parental seductiveness, compared to controls. Mothers of patients tend to be dissatisfied with the family system and themselves; critical comments of mothers predict eating disorder outcomes for daughters (Agras, Hammer, & McNicholas, 1999). Mothers with eating disorders have a negative influence on their children's eating behaviors (Agras, Hammer, & McNicholas, 1999). Agras et al. studied 41 women with a past or present eating disorder and 153 women with no eating disorder and their offspring. Agras et al. found that children of these mothers have greater negative affect by age five years and are at risk for eating disorders, compared to children of mothers without eating disorders. The link between childhood sexual abuse and bulimia is complex. There may be an association between the abuse and the disorder, however bulimic patients do not report an elevated incidence of child abuse (Everill & Waller, 1995). Everill and Waller argue that the sexual abuse only indirectly causes eating disorders such as bulimia, through its influence on self-estee

Category: Psychology - E