Today@Dal

From the March 6 issue of The Globe and Mail:

Perfectionist daughters with controlling mothers are more likely to be binge eaters, using the dysfunctional behaviour as a way of coping with the stress, according to new research from Dalhousie University.

The research is unique, as its focus is not just on the individual but also on her interpersonal relationships, Aislin Mushquash, a PhD student in Dalhousie’s psychology department, and Dr. Simon Sherry, associate professor of psychology at the university, say of their study, which was published in the journal Eating Behaviors.

The study found that daughters who reported having controlling mothers had a predisposition to believing they had to be perfect. “So in the lives of perfectionistic young women who have acrimonious relationships with their mothers, binge eating may serve an important function – a function of soothing, a function of relieving, a function of escaping,” Sherry says.

Read the rest of this article at the Globe and Mail website.