Familial eating concerns and psychopathological traits: causal implications of transgenerational effects.
OBJECTIVE
This study extends an earlier investigation on the link between familial traits and eating disorders (EDs), and examines the extent to which selected eating attitudes and psychopathological traits are (a) familial in nature and (b) specific to anorexia- and bulimia-spectrum disorders.


METHODS
We measured various ED-relevant dimensions (eating and body image attitudes) and psychopathological traits (e.g., affective instability, narcissism, compulsivity, restricted expression) in the mothers, fathers, and sisters of probands displaying an ED (n = 88), another psychiatric disturbance (n = 42), or neither disturbance (n = 59). Total sample, including relatives, was 553.


RESULTS
A principal components analysis (PCA), used to reduce variables and to characterize main sources of variation, yielded three interpretable factors: eating concerns and symptoms (grouping all eating-related dimensions), dramatic-erratic traits (grouping affective instability, narcissism, and conceptually related dimensions), and obsessive-compulsive traits (grouping compulsivity and restricted expression). Correlations among subjects' factor scores (derived from the PCA) showed two types of transgenerational effects: correspondences between daughters' and parents' psychopathological traits, and between daughters' and mothers' eating concerns. Despite these, relatives of ED probands were not discriminable on any factor score from relatives of controls.


CONCLUSIONS
These results imply that transgenerational effects exist on eating attitudes and psychopathological traits, but do not uniquely identify families in which clinical ED syndromes occur.
Steiger
H
H
Eating Disorders Program, Douglas Hospital Centre, McGill University, Quebec, Canada.
Stotland
S
S
Trottier
J
J
Ghadirian
A M
AM
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology*; D001828:Body Image; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002032:Bulimia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology*; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010552:Personality Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D012801:Sibling Relations; D012931:Social Environment