Eating habits and attitudes among mothers of children with feeding disorders

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Abstract
Over 12 months the mothers of all children with ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision)4 diagnoses of a feeding disorder who were referred to local child psychiatric clinics covering one geographical area were identified (n=32). ICD-10 criteria require that a feeding disorder in infancy or childhood “generally involves refusal of food and extreme faddiness.”4 One mother declined to participate and one general practitioner requested that a family should not be approached. Thirty index families were therefore available for study. Each of the 30 children was matched with the next child of the same sex and age referred to the clinic with a behavioural disorder but not a primary eating or feeding problem (n=30). The children's ages ranged from 2 to 12 years (feeding disorder group mean 7.4 (SD 3.6) years; behavioural disorder group mean 7.3 (3.0) years). There were 18 boys and 12 girls in both the index and control groups. All mothers were asked to complete the eating disorder examination-questionnaire.5 This is a standardised self report questionnaire based on a widely used interview and generates five subscales: dietary restraint, bulimia, concern about eating, concern about body shape, and concern about weight.5 Wilcoxon signed rank tests for matched pairs were carried out to compare the two groups (see table for means).

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