Am J Psychiatry 1993; 150:1053-1058
Copyright © 1993 by American Psychiatric Association
Young female alcoholics with and without eating disorders: a comparative study in Japan
K Suzuki, S Higuchi, K Yamada, Y Mizutani and H Kono
National Institute on Alcoholism, Kurihama National Hospital, Kanagawa, Japan.
OBJECTIVE: The authors sought to delineate the characteristics of female
alcoholics with eating disorders. METHOD: The study subjects were 29 female
Japanese outpatients and inpatients, 30 years of age or younger, with
DSM-III-R diagnoses of either alcohol dependence or alcohol abuse and
eating disorders. Twenty-one female alcoholics within the same age range
who did not have eating disorders served as the comparison group. The
social and familial backgrounds, clinical course, and clinical symptoms of
the two groups were compared with the use of a structured interview form
developed for the study. RESULTS: Ninety- three percent of the subjects
with eating disorders had bulimia nervosa; 52% had anorexia nervosa. In all
cases, both disorders continued after the onset of problem drinking. The
age distributions of the two groups of alcoholic subjects clearly differed:
no one in the comparison group was under the age of 24, and the number of
comparison subjects increased with age after age 24, whereas the subjects
with eating disorders ranged in age from 19 to 30 years, with the greatest
number at age 26. More of the alcoholic subjects with eating disorders had
never been married, they had had an earlier onset of alcoholism, and they
had lower body weights than those without eating disorders. Also, more of
them had depression and borderline personality disorder. CONCLUSIONS: The
findings suggest that young female alcoholics with eating disorders
constitute a clinical subgroup of alcoholics with distinct sociodemographic
characteristics and a clinical course and symptoms that differ from those
of both younger and older female alcoholics without eating disorders.
