High self-reported rates of neglect and emotional abuse, by persons with binge eating disorder and night eating syndrome

Abstract

This study compared rates of self-reported childhood maltreatment in three groups diagnosed using semi-structured interviews: binge eating disorder (BED; n = 176), night eating syndrome (NES, n = 57), and overweight/obese comparison (OC, n = 38). We used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess childhood maltreatment and the Beck Depression Inventory-II to assess depression levels. Reports of maltreatment were common in patients with BED (82%), NES (79%), and OC (71%). The BED group reported significantly more forms of maltreatment above clinical cutpoints (2.4) than the OC (1.4) group but not the NES (1.8) group. The BED and NES groups reported more emotional abuse than the OC group. A higher proportion of the BED group reported emotional neglect and a higher proportion of the NES group reported physical neglect. Depression levels, which were higher in BED and NES than OC, were associated with higher levels of physical and emotional abuse and neglect. In conclusion, reported rates of physical and sexual abuse differed little across groups whereas reports of neglect and emotional abuse were higher in the BED and NES groups than in the OC group and were associated with elevated depression levels.

The validity and clinical utility of night eating syndrome

“…When compared with a BED group, BMI was not found to differ between NES and BED in either a diabetic sample 33 or a sample recruited by advertisement. 34 Colles et al 36 reported that NES correlated with BMI in a sample of bariatric surgery candidates. In these studies, depressive symptoms and diagnosis have generally been more frequent in the NES group.…”

“…Hence, in this study binge eating but not night eating was associated with psychopathology. Allison et al 34 compared treatment seeking individuals with NES (n 5 57), BED (n 5 176), or obesity (non-ED, n 5 38) on history of childhood maltreatment. Those with NES differed significantly from obesity controls only on one of five comparisons (''emotional abuse''), with 51% of NES patients and 32% of controls reporting this form of maltreatment.…”

“…Several studies have compared NES with BED on clinical correlates. Allison et al 34 compared treatment seeking individuals with NES (n 5 57), BED (n 5 176), or obesity (non-ED, n 5 38) on current levels of depression using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI II). Depression scores of NES cases were higher than those of obese controls, NES cases, and BED cases did not differ on depression scores.…”

Overgeneral Memory in Binge Eating Disorder is Linked to Binge Frequency

“…As reports of abuse in women with BED are high (Allison et al, 2007;, increased categoric recall in women with BED may on the other hand represent an avoidance reaction of negative intrusive imagery such as past binge attacks or other negative experiences and feelings (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000;Williams et al, 2007). In AN, for example, level of self reported parental abuse was significantly and positively correlated with overgenerality (Dalgleish et al, 2003).…”

“…As specific memories primarily involve sensory-perceptual information, they may produce increases in mood disturbance, which both women with AN and BED may try to avoid. As traumatic experiences are increased in BED women compared to HC (Allison et al, 2007;), we did not do any mediation analyses (Miller & Chapman, 2001) with traumatic history. Therefore, to better understand the role of traumatic history in the recall of AM, future studies should compare BED women with and BED women without traumatic history with regard to AM recall.…”