Eating Dysfunctions in College Women: The Roles of Depression and Attachment to Fathers

Abstract

The authors examined the roles of depression and attachment to fathers in college women's eating dysfunctions. Three-hundred six undergraduate women completed (1) a diagnostic measure of eating dysfunctions that categorized them as asymptomatic, symptomatic but not eating disordered, or eating disordered; (2) 3 dimensional measures of attachment to fathers; and (3) a dimensional measure of depression. Depression was directly related to severity of participants' eating dysfunction; the eating-disordered group had scores consistent with clinical depression. After controlling for depression, 3 facets of attachment to fathers significantly differentiated the 3 groups.

Feelings of insecurity: Review of attachment and eating disorders

“…Thus, these studies do not provide specific hypotheses about how or why attachment insecurity relates to eating disorders, but highlight the high prevalence of measured insecure attachment among people with eating problems and eating disorders. Our review found 12 representatives of this general risk factor approach (Armstrong & Roth, 1989;Broberg et al, 2001;Burge et al, 1997;Elgin & Pritcgard, 2006;Fonagy et al, 1996;Gutzwiller, Oliver, & Katz, 2003;Hochdorf, Latzer, Canetti, & Bachar, 2005;Kenny & Hart, 1992;Mallinckrodt, Mccreary, & Robertson, 1995;Miljkovitch, Pierrehumbert, Karmaniola, Bader, & Halfon, 2005;Tasca, Kowal, Blafour, Ritchie, Virley, & Bissada, 2006;Ward, Ramsay, Turnbull, Benedettini, & Treasure, 2000b).…”

Socio-demographic predictors of health behaviors in Mexican college students

“…College freshmen experience a new environment that generally involves increased workload and stress, altered sleeping patterns and dining halls with a great variety of fast food, which are significant contributors to weight gain (Economos et al, 2008). Psychological stress within the college population is also a risk factor for alcohol consumption (Wilson et al, 2004), cigarette smoking (Lenz, 2004;Patterson et al, 2004), inadequate nutrition (Gutzwiller et al, 2003) and low physical activity (Buckworth and Nigg, 2004). Health Promotion International,Vol.…”

Optimism and College Grades: Predicting GPA From Explanatory Style

“…In a prevalence study on eating disorders in women, researchers found lifetime prevalence rates of 0.9% for anorexia nervosa, 1.5% for bulimia nervosa, and 3.5% for binge-eating disorder (Hudson, Hiripi, Pope, & Kessler, 2007). Gutzwiller, Oliver, and Katz (2003) found that 12% of women met the DSM-IV criteria for an eating disorder. However, these numbers did not include the number of women suffering from eating dysfunctions.…”

“…One study found that participants diagnosed with an eating disorder displayed clinical levels of depression, whereas participants with an eating dysfunction displayed mild levels of depressive symptoms, and those with no eating disorder or dysfunction displayed the lowest levels of depression (Gutzwiller et al, 2003). In addition, another study found that depression was a predictor of restricting attitudes regarding food, which is a predictor of restricting behaviors regarding food (Morris, Parra, & Stender, 2011).…”