Alcohol and Eating Disorders Research often selleck screening library has found that eating disorders in women are associated with problem drinking. The strongest recent evidence is in a meta-analysis of 41 studies, mainly in the U.S. and Canada, in which women��s eating disorders consistently were associated with AUDs (Gadalla and Piran 2007). The meta-analysis included a very large Canadian general-population survey in which risks of eating disorders also were associated with heavier weekly drinking among women ages 15 to 44 (Piran and Gadalla 2007). Hypotheses to explain observed links between women��s eating disorders and drinking typically have focused on possible common antecedents (distress, personality characteristics, and genetic factors) rather than on ways that eating disorders might cause or be caused by drinking (Conason and Sher 2006).

The meta-analysis by Gadalla and Piran (2007) showed that problem drinking was associated more specifically with bulimic behavior than with anorexia nervosa. The associations also were stronger among women in community or student samples but were weaker or absent when women in treatment for eating disorders were compared with women in the general population. A multisite European study comparing individuals (mostly women) in treatment versus healthy individuals in the general population also failed to find that those in eating disorders treatment drank more heavily (Krug et al. 2008). It is possible that such negative findings could result because many women receiving treatment or seeking treatment for eating disorders curtail their drinking.

Alcohol and Suicidal Behavior Although research often has reported on factors affecting rates of suicide among women, only rarely have studies been able to show how individual women��s drinking patterns are related to suicidal behavior. An exception was a 20-year follow-up of a large sample of Swedish women hospitalized because of suicidal behavior; those women diagnosed also with alcohol abuse or dependence had a higher risk of later committing suicide (Tidemalm et al. 2008). Most general-population surveys of individual women have shown that suicidal ideation (thinking about committing suicide) was associated with heavier, more frequent, or more hazardous drinking. In the United States, for example, women��s suicidal ideation was associated with hazardous drinking patterns in a longitudinal study of women aged 26 to 54 (Wilsnack et al.

2004) and was associated with alcohol dependence in the large National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (Grant and Hasin 1999). A large study of active-duty U.S. Air Force personnel also found that women��s suicidal ideation AV-951 was associated with higher levels of alcohol problems, but only among women who were not mothers (Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. 2011).