What Causes Eating Disorders? Are Parents at Fault?
Laura Collins, author of "Eating With Your Anorexic" (McGraw-Hill)
Parents care about what caused their child's eating disorder. For one thing, we naturally blame ourselves. Often, we can't help but blame our loved one for their self-destructive thoughts and behaviors. In our understandable search for answers we hear a lot of conflicting things from treatment professionals, the media, and the people around us.
Parents are often told that eating disorders are caused by a number of factors. It is common to hear "there is no one cause" and "cause does not matter." We are sometimes even told that our intense interest in understanding cause is somehow pathological. This much is clear: therapists and other professionals base the treatments they offer on their own beliefs about cause. Since science has not yet found the answers to those questions, there are as many approaches to treatment as there are theories. It is important for parents to be clear on what each professional in contact with their loved one believes; ask each clinician whether they are using evidence-based treatment, and if not, why not?
Maudsley family-based therapy, for example, assumes an 'agnostic' position on what caused the eating disorder - but one cause has been ruled out: parents. In fact, in this approach the family is seen as one of the greatest resources for recovery.
I make a hobby of collecting theories on the cause of eating disorders. To date, I have seen no credible evidence to support blaming parents, society, abuse, bullying, neglect, a desire to remain childlike, peer pressure, unresolved unconscious conflict, fear of sexuality, thin models, a need for control, and most notably no evidence to the idea that sufferers choose to have an eating disorder. I believe EDs are brain disorders whose exact mechanisms are not yet clear (also true of bipolar disorder, autism, and depression). I do note one common factor to the first act of virtually all cases of eating disorders: dieting, or failure to reliably eat enough for daily needs: in other words, malnourishment.
For an excellent overview of the current science on eating disorders, see the F.E.A.S.T. website: www.FEAST-ED.org
Read and sign the F.E.A.S.T. Position Statement "Parents Don't Cause Eating Disorders"
For an ongoing discussion of the causes and research on eating disorders, visit my blog:
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