Another link to obesity: Abuse
By:
NWHF Staff
| Posted on: June 18th, 2010
| 
1 comments
| Share: 
Categories:
Disparities •
Economic Issues •
Education •
Policies & Laws •
Food & Nutrition •
Public Health
New research has just been published which shows that children of abused women are at increased risk of being obese.
The study of 1,595 boys and girls showed that children whose mothers were victims of abuse were more likely to be obese by age 5 than children of mothers who didn’t experience such violence.
The link between obesity and an abused mother was stronger in girls than in boys, and also among children whose mothers said they lived in unsafe neighborhoods.
The authors of the study, published in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, write that “public health practitioners must consider the impact of family violence on obesity risk when designing and implementing primary obesity prevention interventions.”
They also state that “interventions aimed at educating adolescents about healthy relationships prior to childbearing, may play a crucial role in prevention of early childhood obesity.”
Finally, the authors write that “interventions aimed at improving neighborhood safety may have a benefit on reducing obesity risk, even among those exposed to family violence.”
What’s the message to policymakers here?
1 Comment:
Next entry: 
Previous entry: 
Back to main
As someone with a recovered eating disorder, it’s difficult for me to separate what perpetuates obesity from that which perpetuates binge eating disorder. They are sister synonyms wrapped up in the same dysfunction, beckoning the body to succumb to ill health. Because I inherently understanding the emotional catalyst for entering into disordered eating, it seems imperative to address the national obesity epidemic from a perspective not only from that of a lifestyle and nutritional perspective, but also from that of a psychologically empathetic view with a focus on psychotherapy that takes into account how abuse and trauma can lead to a disturbed relationship with food in the first place.
There has already been well-documented research linking victims of abuse to obesity, first noticed when weight loss physicians began to recognize the prevalence of childhood abuse within their patients’ histories, but what I find intriguing about the new research that this article presents is that abuse experienced second-hand in the form of children watching their mothers is just as likely to complicate their relationships with food and body image as it is to experience the abuse first-hand. I did have to follow-up and find out exactly which types of abuse are linked to obesity, as the language is often vague in the brief write-ups of the research, and quickly discovered that although sexual abuse is slightly more causal, other types of abuse are also associated with obesity.
Whilst I’ve also learned that obesity and poverty are irrevocably tangled within this country, abuse is something that transcends class and race and isn’t particular to any group but experienced by all. So the dominant focus on diet and exercise and the dismissal of mental health services for the treatment of obesity is problematic in that it doesn’t shoot an arrow into one of the hearts of the problem. Things get further complicated when one recognizes that not only are obesity rates rising within the nation, but so are sex abuse rates. So I feel as though there needs to be more dialogue within the medical and psychological communities as to how to confront this goliath problem and take a multi-faceted approach that involves asking why you’re eating the Cheetos instead of telling someone to just say “no” to Cheetos. As if you pressure someone to take away their dominant coping mechanism without providing them with healthy strategies for managing trauma and stress, you’re simply asking for a perpetuation of the problem.