Tufts Clinician Studies Bulimia

A researcher at Tufts University plans to use Tufts and Harvard students to study whether bulimia, an eating disorder found primarily in college-age women, has physical as well as psychological components.

Emily Fox, a clinician associated with the Tufts Department of Psychology in Medford, plans to interview about 75 women to determine if bulimia--a form of anorexia in which victims overeat and then try to lose the weight they have gained by self-induced vomiting--is purely psychological.

"Bulimia is a psychological response to conflicts within the subjects' family and upbringing," Fox said.

While other researchers have hypothesized that bulimia is a form of substance dependency, Fox said she thinks that people binge after experiencing a psychological state of deprivation.

Fox said she hopes to apply this restraint theory, formulated by Canadian researchers Janet Polivy and Peter Herman, to bulemia for the first time. Using other eating disorders as a model, Polivy and Herman postulated that after starving themselves, dieters experience a physchological state of deprivation and an increased amount of tension, which expresses itself in binging.

The project, which began about a month ago, stems from Fox's interest in eating disorders, which she has treated in Boston women for the past 12 years.

"My particular understanding of the problem is that culture puts enormous pressure on females to be thin," said Fox. "Before a size 14 was acceptable--now it's too plump," she added.

Fox has just completed the first phase of her research, interviewing a control group of 40 females about their normal eating habits. Most of the members of the control group are Tufts students who receive extra credit in their psychology course at the university.

The experimental group will include 30 subjects, who all have bulemia symptoms. Fox is currently interviewing perspective candidates from both Harvard and Tufts for this group.

Subjects

Subjects involved in this part of the research will make trips to Fox's lab each day for a week so she can record the details of their diet. Over the next several months each subject will also fill out follow-up questionaires concerning her eating habits.

Fox said that although "with proper treatment bulemia can be handled," she added that she is uncertain victims can maintain their success. The key to success, she said, is realizing that "the average American female was not meant to be a size three."