Is season of birth related to disordered eating and personality in women with eating disorders?
N.K. Shuman1, I. Krug2, M. Maxwell3, A. Poyastro Pinheiro3, T. Brewerton4, L.M. Thornton3, W.H. Berrettini5, H. Brandt6, S. Crawford6, S. Crow7, M.M. Fichter8,9, K.A. Halmi10, C. Johnson11, A.S. Kaplan12, P. Keel13, M. LaVia3, J. Mitchell14,15, A. Rotondo16, M. Strober17, D. Blake Woodside12, W.H. Kaye18, and C.M. Bulik3,19
1Maggie L Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies, Richmond, VA, 2Department of Psychiatry, Bellvitge University Hospital, Barcelona and Ciber Fisiopatologia de la Obesidad y Nutricion (CIBERobn), Instituto Salud Carlos III, Spain, 3Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 4Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston, Charleston, SC, 5Center of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 6Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 7Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 8Department of Psychiatry, University of Munich (LMU), Munich, Germany, 9Roseneck Hospital for Behavioral Medicine, Prien, Germany, 10New York Presbyterian Hospital-Westchester Division, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, White Plains, NY, 11Eating Recovery Center, Denver, CO, 12Department of Psychiatry, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada, 13Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 14Neuropsychiatric Research Institute, Fargo, ND, 15Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Fargo, ND, 16Department of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Biotechnologies, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, 17Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 18Department of Psychiatry, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, 19Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Abstract

We assessed the relation between season of birth and eating disorder symptoms and personality characteristics in a sample of 880 women with eating disorders and 580 controls from two Price Foundation Studies. Eating disorder symptoms were assessed using the Structured Interview of Anorexic and Bulimic Disorders and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Personality traits were assessed using the Temperament and Character Inventory and the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. Date of birth was obtained from a sociodemographic questionnaire. No significant differences were observed 1) in season of birth across eating disorder subtypes and controls; nor 2) for any clinical or personality variables and season of birth. We found no evidence of season of birth variation in eating disorders symptoms or personality traits. Contributing to previous conflicting findings, the present results do not support a season of birth hypothesis for eating disorders.

Copyright©2010, Editrice Kurtis

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