LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

The parental bonding in families of adolescents with anorexia: attachment representations between parents and offspring

Photo from wikipedia

Introduction The attachment theory is widely used in order to explain anorexia nervosa origin, course and treatment response. Nevertheless, very little literature specifically investigated parental bonding in adolescents with anorexia,… Click to show full abstract

Introduction The attachment theory is widely used in order to explain anorexia nervosa origin, course and treatment response. Nevertheless, very little literature specifically investigated parental bonding in adolescents with anorexia, as well as the parents’ own bonding and intergenerational transmission within the family. Purpose This study aims to identify any specific pattern of parental bonding in families of adolescents newly diagnosed with restricting-type anorexia, comparing them to the families of the control group. Patients and methods A total of 168 participants, adolescents and parents (78 belonging to the anorexia group and 90 to the control one), rated the perceived parental styles on the parental bonding instrument. The latent class analysis allowed the exploration of a maternal bonding latent variable and a paternal one. Results The main findings showed that a careless and overcontrolling parental style was recalled by the patients’ parents, and in particular by the fathers. As far as the adolescents’ responses were concerned, patients with anorexia did not seem to express differently their parental bonding perception from participants of the control group. Conclusion Clinical implications driven from the results suggest that a therapeutic intervention working on how the parents’ own attachment representations influence current relationships may help to modify the actual family functioning and thus the outcome of patients with anorexia.

Keywords: attachment representations; adolescents anorexia; bonding; bonding families; parental bonding; families adolescents

Journal Title: Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment
Year Published: 2017

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.