Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESLongitudinal Relationships Between Childhood, Adolescent, and Adult Eating Disorders
Section snippets
Participants
The study is based on a cohort of over 800 children and their mothers who received initial interview-based psychiatric assessments in 1975 (time 1: childhood) when they were between ages of 1 and 10. Subjects were reassessed in 1983 (time 2: early adolescence), 1985 (time 3: late adolescence), and 1992 (time 4: early adulthood). The mean age of the subjects was 6.1 in 1975 (range = 1–10 years), 13.9 in 1983 (range = 9–18 years), 16.3 in 1985 (range = 11–20 years), and 22.1 in 1992 (range =
Sample Characteristics
Table 1 gives an overview of the characteristics of the sample, including number studied, mean age and age range, gender, and ethnicity information. Eating disorder characteristics of the sample are also presented. Eating disorder diagnoses were not determined in early childhood. There were no females who met the full DSM criteria for AN, and a relaxed definition of the disorder was used to include all DSM criteria except the presence of amenorrhea. This relaxed definition for AN yielded a
DISCUSSION
The present study addressed the longitudinal relationship between eating problems in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood in a community sample. The presence of an eating disorder or severe eating disorder symptoms in early or late adolescence increased the risk of having an eating disorder in young adulthood. The stability of eating disorder symptoms was moderate, with correlations over time in the range of 0.4 to 0.5 for AN and 0.3 to 0.4 for BN. Certain childhood eating problems,
REFERENCES (24)
Epidemiology of the eating disorders
Psychiatr Clin North Am
(1996)- et al.
Early childhood eating behaviors and adolescent eating disorders
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1990) - et al.
Treatment of eating disorders in children and adolescents
Clin Psychol Rev
(1998) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV)
(1994)- et al.
Are eating and psychosocial characteristics in early teenage years useful predictors of eating characteristics in early adulthood? a 7-year longitudinal study
Int J Eat Disord
(1998) - et al.
Life Values and Adolescent Mental Health
(1996) - et al.
Validity of the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC): a comparison between psychiatric and pediatric referrals
J Abnorm Child Psychol
(1985) - et al.
Bulimia in college women: incidence and recovery rates
Am J Psychiatry
(1988) - et al.
Risk factors for anorexia nervosa
Arch Gen Psychiatry
(1999) - et al.
Risk factors for bulimia nervosa
Arch Gen Psychiatry
(1997)
A population study of bulimia nervosa and subclinical eating disorders in adolescence
Prediction of eating problems: an 8-year study of adolescent girls
Dev Psychol
Cited by (277)
Early childhood appetitive traits and eating disorder symptoms in adolescence: a 10-year longitudinal follow-up study in the Netherlands and the UK
2024, The Lancet Child and Adolescent HealthTemperament and psychopathology in early childhood predict body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms in adolescence
2022, Behaviour Research and TherapyPrevalence, predictors, and treatment of eating disorders in children: A national study
2023, Psychological Medicine
This work was supported by NIMH grants MH 54161 and MH 49191 to Dr. Cohen and MH 16434 to Dr. Kotler.