Father-Daughter Relationships And Eating Disorders: A Case Study

Thesis Statement: It is important to understand eating disorders and the types of eating disorders to overcome them and seek the proper treatment.

     The family tends to play an important role in the development of eating disorders. Males tend to have very strict, domineering fathers who encouraged development in sports. It has also been recognized that many men with eating disorders may not have had a father figure around at all. (Zerbe, 1992) Their mothers have been described as overprotective and controlling. (Romero, 1994) Adolescent boys with eating disorders relate that parents or siblings are usually on diets as well and there tends to be an emphasis on food and dieting

The Inpatient Program “medically stabilizes young people with serious eating disorders” through medical monitoring, nutritional rehabilitation, psychiatric consultation and group programming (SickKids, 2014). The Outpatient Program involves family therapy with a therapist and consultation with a dietitian, along with medical monitoring. For children younger than 13 years of age, an additional support of therapy is offered—multifamily groups and separate groups for the parents and their child. The Day Hospital offers care to patients with severe eating disorders who were already in a program and would need longer term intensive support for recovery. This long-term support operates five days a week, and treatment runs for an average of six months. Additionally, the programs offer a two-part family education series for families participating in the treatment programs. Topics covered include: information about eating disorders, medical complications, approach to nutritional recovery and describes treatments offered. Part two focuses on how parents can support their child with an eating disorder to resume normal eating (SickKids, 2014). The hospital is a good resource because it uses an interdisciplinary approach to treat children and youth who suffer from the disorder. It also involves families in patient

I would be interested to know if Felicia had ever expressed interest in seeing a counselor? It is my understanding that willingness to be in therapy is a key pointy to a therapeutic alliance. I would highly stress the point that I did not have training in eating disorders. If Felicia told me first hand that she was interested in working with me I would accept. I would not bring up her mother’s concerns about a possible eating disorder but rather allow her to express whatever it is she feels the need to express.

Family Systems approach is another form of psychotherapy that treats the entire family unit. It assumes that everyone in the family contributes to the problem, and that change must take place throughout the family system, not just within the individual presenting the eating disorder (“Family therapy”, 2014, para. 1). This approach helps to,

An eating disorder has complex origins. Although most people think that an obsession with weight and appearance leads to this deadly disease, this is merely the surface issue. Along with the ultimate need for control, other causes can be genetic factors, parental influence, behavioral influence, environmental influence, and biochemistry. Many studies have found that eating disorders run in families. Almost always, it is the closely related females in the family who are affected. Some researchers believe that negative parental influence can come from both the maternal and paternal sides. Mothers often comment on their daughters' appearance, whether on their physical shape or on their ability to dress well. So often simple motherly love turns into a psychological desire for their daughters to be what they were not. Studies have found that these

Ringer and Crittenden’s (2007) study examined the pattern of attachment in women with an eating disorder to determine what types of self-protective strategies they used and also whether there was a specific relationship between strategy and diagnosis. Their study used the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) method.

In a review article on anorexia and family issues, Yager describes how anecdotal reports of child-parent interactions and personality styles of parents show a great deal of variability. The relationships between mothers and daughters are reported by some to be rejecting and by others to be ambivalent or overinvolved. Although these mother-child interactions are contradictory, several general themes are present (Blinder, Chaitin & Goldstein, 1988). Anorexic mothers tend to focus all of their attention on the well-being of their children (Minuchin, Rosman & Baker, 1978). They set high expectations and foster ambitions for external achievement. The mothers of anorexics may be involved socially, they usually lack intimate friends. In many cases, the daughter becomes the mother's confidant. This overinvolvement creates separation difficulty later in life (Blinder, Chaitin & Goldstein, 1988). A great amount of variability exists in father-daughter dyads as well. Some anorexic fathers have been described as kind and affectionate, while others have been described as passive and ineffectual. These fathers are often peripheral to the family (Blinder, Chaitin & Goldstein, 1988).

Santos, 2014). Forty percent of parents who have a child with an eating disorder experience

The use of family therapy in the treatment and management of adolescent anorexia nervosa has been established since the 1970s, when Minuchin began a trial of family therapy as an intervention within a population of adolescent anorexia nervosa patients. (14) While these patients ' other treatments were inconsistent, with some inpatient and some undergoing individual therapy, the commonality between them was a focus on family therapy. While this was not a clinical trial, 86% of patients showed positive outcomes at follow-up, a cause for optimism and catalyst for further examination (15). A team of clinical researchers at London 's Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, led by family therapists Christopher Dare and Ivan Eisler, was

Much of the literature that focuses on the parents' role in the development of eating disorders is focused on the mother and the mother-daughter relationship. Studies have shown conclusively that a mother's body image and eating habits are, mirrored in her daughter, and that if she is obsessed with her own body image, it stands likely that her daughter will be the same way both growing up and in her adult life. The father, though, is often left out of the research except for in the basic family profile. Here, we will examine the active role that the father plays in the development of eating disorders in their daughters. First, we will explore why the father's ideas and

The Role of Emotional Eating as a Psychological Predictor of weight gain after Bariatric surgery.

A dysfunction family was defined as “the characteristics of anorexic families as being enmeshed, overprotective, rigid and conflict-avoidant” (Minuchin et al (1978). This has led to family therapists suggesting that adolescents may develop an ED to gain independence in their family life and hope that it will unite their family instead of conflict. Oppenheimer et al (1985) has suggested that the onset of an ED may be as a result of sexual abuse in an individual’s past. This model suggests that an ED develops as a result of a woman rejecting her new body shape in puberty, as she attempts to avoid the feminine shape. Although, sexual abuse for the onset of an ED doesn’t have strong evidence; although sexual abuse been disclosed by many sufferers.

females do not realize that their child is suffering from a particular eating disorder, or the parents

On the other hand, deficits of parental attachments were linked with different types of adolescent psychopathology on clinical groups, which induces to support the findings in the study. Regarding seeking proximity, half of the group with eating disorders claimed that since the disorder was identified, they developed a closer relationship with their mothers. The findings proposed that the disorder served as a mean to obtain closeness in order to satisfy the mothering hunger for the emotionally unsatisfied adolescent (Orzolek-Kronner, 2002). One limitation to this study is the reliability of self-present measures reported by adolescents. Another limitation is that this study focuses only on females and their relationships with their mothers.