It Doesn't Happen Here: Eating Disorders in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Economically Disadvantaged, Urban College Students

Abstract

The bulk of eating disorder studies have focused on white, middle-upper class women, excluding ethnically and economically diverse women and men. Accordingly, our knowledge of prevalence rates and risk factors is reliant on this narrow literature. To expand upon the current literature, we examined eating disorders in ethnically diverse low-income, urban college students. We surveyed 884 incoming freshmen during an orientation class to assess the frequency of eating disorder diagnosis and the risk factors of child physical abuse and sexual abuse before and after age 13. We found 10% of our sample received an eating disorder diagnosis, 12.2% of the women and 7.3% of the men. The majority of these students were Latino/a or “other,” with White women receiving the fewest diagnoses. For all women, both child physical abuse and both indices of sexual abuse contributed equally to the development of an eating disorder. For men only the sexual abuse indices contributed to an eating disorder diagnosis. These results indicate that ethnic minority populations do suffer from relatively high rates of self-reported eating disorders and that a history of trauma is a significant risk factor for eating disorders in these diverse populations of both women and men.

This research was supported by grants from by Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors.

We would like to thank Maureen O'Connor, Robert De Lucia, Patricia Sinatra, and Roger Witherspoon who generously facilitated data collection.