SELF-DIRECTED HOSTILITY AND FAMILY FUNCTIONING IN NORMAL-WEIGHT BULIMICS AND OVERWEIGHT BINGE EATERS

The aim of this study was to examine whether overweight binge eaters d emonstrate similar perceptions of family interactions and views of the self as do normal-weight bulimics. We compared 37 obese binge eaters and 37 normal-weight bulimics to 38 normal-weight non bulimic controls , and 10 overweight nonbulimic controls on the Bulimia Test (BULIT), P rofile of Mood States (POMS), Structural Analysis of Social Behavior ( SASB) Short Form, which includes measure of hostility of family intera ctions and self-directed hostility, the Family Interaction Survey (FIS ), and a measure of history of physical and sexual abuse and familial psychopathology. Both normal-weight bulimics and overweight binge eate rs differed from nonbulimic controls across all measures of symptomato logy, family functioning, history of abuse, familial psychopathology, and self-directed hostility. Normal-weight bulimics demonstrated signi ficantly higher BULIT scores and self-directed hostility than did over weight binge eaters. Post hoc analysis showed that among binge eaters and bulimics, self-directed hostility accounted for a significant perc entage of the variance of BULIT scores when controlling for the effect s of age, BMI, family hostility, and mood. The possible role of self-d irected hostility in the maintenance of bulimic symptomatology is disc ussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.