ASPECTS OF CHILDHOOD PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT AND FAMILY ENVIRONMENT CORRELATES IN BULIMIA-NERVOSA

Although histories of child sexual abuse among eating disorder patient s have attracted considerable attention in the past decade, relatively little is known about parental physical abuse among these patients. W e examined aspects of childhood parental physical punishment and its f amily environmental correlates among women with a lifetime history of bulimia nervosa (BN group; n = 80) and women with no history of eating disorder (Control group; n = 40), recruited primarily by newspaper ad vertisement. Women in the BN group reported significantly more physica l punishment and perceived their discipline to have been more harsh an d capricious than women in the Control group. Nonetheless, the groups did not differ significantly in the extent to which they believed they deserved their punishment or in the belief that they were ''physicall y abused.'' Further, subjects often failed to assert that they had bee n physically abused despite meeting conservative criteria, while the r everse tendency was uncommon. Finally, increased levels of physical pu nishment were associated with greater global family pathology in the B N group, but not in the Control group. Our finding underscore the nece ssity of explicitly inquiring about physically punitive events in the histories of bulimic women, as well as beliefs regarding these events.