Family factors in the etiology of eating disorders: A current review

Eating disorders is an issue that has recently been accentuated because of high mortality rate, difficulty of its treatment and relapse risk. Anorexia nervosa is a psychological disorder characterized by a markedly low body weight, fear of gaining weight or getting fat, despite of low body weight, engaging behaviors that make it difficult to gain weight, and distorted perception of body weight and form, while bulimia nervosa is a psychological disorder characterized by overeating in a particular period of time and condition, losing control during eating, accompanied by compensatory behaviors towards losing weight. In binge eating disorder, the feeling of not being able to control eating behavior and consuming much more than most people can normally eat is seen. Etiology of eating disorders has a multifactor structure including biological, environmental, cultural, personal and familial factors. Although a lot of opinions from personal factors to family variables have been suggested to explain the reasons of eating disorders, the family plays an important role in the etiology of eating disorders in terms of psychological, systemic, relational and attachment processes. In this review, it was basically aimed to investigate the role of family in the etiology of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.