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Platinum Member
Posts: 539
 
Location: Scotland | This article really got to me because I have a younger brother and didn't realise how much my eating habits could affect him.
Here's the main points (taken from The Experience of Siblings of Adolescents With Eating Disorders):
Methods:
Siblings were recruited between January 2008 and April 2008. Inclusion criteria included siblings aged 10–18 years old and living with a sibling with an ED. Exclusion criteria included having an ED, or major psychiatric disorder, or a communication problem that interfered with their participation.
Results:
Twenty siblings (14 females) of 17 adolescents with eating disorders (15 females) participated. All but one sibling scored within the normal range for the Eating Attitudes Test-26. Key themes identified included a desire to understand the ED, acute awareness of ED behaviors and thoughts, challenges in understanding noneating-related obsessive behaviors, increase in family conflict and arguments, compassion and concern for the adolescent with the eating disorder, feelings of loss and sacrifice, overwhelming sense of responsibility for the adolescent with the eating disorder, and a sense of pervasiveness of the ED in all aspects of their lives. The siblings' accounts of these themes were noted to be fraught with contradictions. Eighty percent reported that their quality of life was negatively affected by the onset of their siblings' ED.
Do any of you have siblings who might be negatively affected by your ED?
Edited by juicyjacei 2/22/2010 10:35 PM
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Posts: 4590
Location: Wisconsin | You asked if any of us had siblings that this could have affected.
I was formally diagnosed at the age of 14.
At that time my siblings ages would have been (11, 8, 5, 3 and a newborn)
Not all of those children grew up in the same home as I.
The girls did.
The boys grew up with my father.
How did I see my eating disorder affect my siblings?
Honestly, not in many ways.
The 11 year old moved out and lived with her father until she was 14.. and then she moved back in with us.
By which time I was 17. (and moved out a year later)
The 8 year old was kinda in her own little world.
I did see her and my other sister get angry with me at times for being in the hospital. But they never have had problems eating.
The child that was just born when I was 14, is developmentally delayed.
She didn't learn to talk till she was 9.
And is in the autistic spectrum.
I moved out of the house when she was 4.
And yet, she out of all of them was the one to display odd eating patterns when her parents separated.
(she cut out junk food, and ran around the house to "burn calories")
The boys..
I didn't grow up in the same house, but they knew I was in the hospital and I think my parents explained it to them in some way.
The then 5 year old is now 15. He was overweight as a child, and has thinned out. He doesn't really seem to care about weight.
The then 3 year old is now 13. He is in cross country, and is a bit more obsessed with how he physically appears.
But he'll say thing like how his calves are "all muscle", and how my other brother is flabby cause all he does is sit on his butt and play video games. |
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Platinum Member
Posts: 539
Location: Scotland | ^ Thanks for sharing :).
I have a younger brother, and he was 11 or 12 when I was formally diagnosed (I was 16 or 17). This study was done about female siblings of eating disordered adolescents, so it doesn't say anything about boys. I left a year or two after, so I wasn't able to fully see how it affected him. He would always get sad and angry when I had to go to the hospital. If anything I think it made him more sensitive. |
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Regular
Posts: 188
Location: Orange County | This is interesting. Thank you for sharing. My family hates me for my ed. I am in the middle of two older step sisters, one natural tom boy sister, myself, a younger athletic brother, and two adopted girls. Every one of them blames me for being the trouble maker, and every one of them still points a finger at me as how I made waves because I wouldnt eat or how someone ratted me out because i didnt clean the toilet enough after I puked in it. Im the black sheep of the family bc of my ed. I come from a wealthy family where everyone wants to be the best and I just dont care anymore. Im sure that if one of my younger sisters did have an ed they'd probably blame it on me for being a bad example and introducing it. f**king b**ches. |
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Regular
Posts: 131
Location: Atlanta | I have two younger sisters who were 12 and 18 when I was first diagnosed and had to go IP. I didn't realize how much it affected them at first, but I do now and it bothers me a whole lot. It's hard enough to deal with an ED, let alone feeling ashamed/embarrassed because of what you put your family through. :(
Interesting post though. Thanks for sharing! <3 |
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DIAMOND
Posts: 3077
Location: England | I've been studying something similar at the moment, if you have an eating disorder, apparently your siblings have a 9% chance of developing one. Amongst monozygotic twins, it's as high as 23%. But then there's the whole genetics vs. nurture/environment argument, since most siblings grow up in the same household, if they're predisposed to developing an eating disorder they'll be around the same triggers so the concordance rate will be higher. |
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Regular
Posts: 110
Location: East Coast, United States | I think things like this are just so fascinating!   |
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Gold Member
Posts: 435
Location: ATX, I wanna be skin, bones and stilettos.. | I have a weird related situation:
My sister is younger then me by 6 years. Im 22 now and she is 16. When I lived at home 17ish she started purging (I think) and my mom screamed at her all the time about it and she started cutting back alot. I wasnt EDed then but I was a yoyo dieter. I remember thinking she was a real idiot for trying to throw up. She only did that for about a week though then she got over it... later when I was 20 I started purging but I dont think it really had anything to do with her but who can be sure. |
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Member
Posts: 52
| I have to say it was the opposite for me, my siser suffered for 10 years and being in paient alot of that, Can't remember how old but i htin kshe was about 11 and i would have been 9, it wasnt until she was almost recovered that i became mia. I was 17 when it first started with me and im now 25. my sister is completley reovered...from what i can gather anyway. I have to admit i highly doubt i would be Ed'ed if i hadn't grown up with my sister being as sick as she was. I saw her get down to 37 kg's, loose 7 kilos in 3 days etc.... for some strange reason i decided sticking my fingers down my throat was a good idea...... oh how wrong i was. it worked for her, but i also think most imporantly i am the youngest of 4 and my sister got so much attention and time from my parents because she needed it becoming sick myself was a good thing in my mind (no one in my family knows im ED...i did tell me sister drunkenly years ago though nothing ever came of it)
Interesting study though
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Newbie
Posts: 9
Location: UK | Regarding twins nature/nuture debate, I think just having someone live with you, who you can easily compare yourself can aggravate tendencies to alrready be self-critical. also know even times when I want to eat and then get angry (on the inside) because my twin doesn't feel like eating, so if you are already debating it in your head, then watching your other half turn down food, makes you think 'if i eat that I'll be the fatter on'
Oh sorry this is so long.
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Member
Posts: 67
Location: California | My mother had an eating disorder when I was younger, and then it became really prominent when I was 11. Which is around when I developed my eating disorder. When I was about 16 one of my sisters developed an eating disorder. So I'm not quite sure if it was because of me, or because of my mom, or genetics. Maybe it was a combination of everything. |
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Siblings of Adolescents with Eating Disorders (Study)
