Editorial: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Disordered Eating Behaviors: Specific Associations and Individual...

Potential associations between adverse childhood events and disordered eating have been a topic of research interest for decades, often focused on specific types of child abuse.¹ More recent research has included a wider variety of adverse childhood events, including parental illness or absence.^{2 , 3} The idea that such adversity triggers disordered eating has caught the eye of media and has become socially accepted, with films such as To the Bone focusing on a character's struggle with an eating disorder in the wake of her parents' divorce and emotional absenteeism.⁴ Portrayals like this risk oversimplifying complex situations and individual experiences for dramatic purposes and, without additional work to convey risk, lead the public to believe that disordered eating, or eating disorders, are inevitable outcomes of many adverse childhood events. This makes it important for researchers to better understand, and communicate, how individual adverse childhood events relate to specific disordered eating behaviors, as well as what factors may mediate associations between exposures and outcomes.