Characteristics of bulimic patients whose parents do or do not abuse alcohol

This study attempts to understand the effects of a parental history of alcohol abuse on the psychopathology and symptoms of bulimia nervosa (BN).

The study involved 121 female BN patients consecutively admitted to the Eating Disorders Unit of the University Hospital of Bellvitge. The sample was divided post hoc into two subgroups on the basis of the presence (PAA, n=25) or not of parental abuse of alcohol (NPAA, n=96). All of the patients fulfilled the DSM-IV criteria for BN.

The assessment measures were the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-40), the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI), the Bulimic Investigatory Test Edinburgh (BITE), the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), as well as clinical and psychopathological variables.

Only 7.4% of the patients reported current alcohol abuse and this correlated positively with the presence of other impulsive behaviours (p<0.001). Furthermore, PAA was observed in 20.7% of cases. When the PAA and NPAA subgroups were compared, no significant differences were found in the symptomatological or psychopathological variables, but the PAA group showed more frequent parental obesity (p<0.001) and its members lived less frequently with their parents (p<0.001). The results of this study suggest that there is little correlation between parental abuse of alcohol and the severity of BN.