The long-term impact of an eating disorder prevention program for professional ballet school students: A 15-year follow-up study

ABSTRACT

Eating disorder prevention programs have been assessed up to 3 years post-implementation; however, their impact on long-term resilience is unclear. The current study assessed disordered eating and body dissatisfaction in 116 dancers from a professional ballet school 15 or more years following their participation in an effective selective prevention program. Dancers who attended the ballet school during and following the program endorsed fewer thoughts and behaviours associated with bulimia, had lower lifetime prevalence of laxative use, and showed a trend toward lower lifetime rates of vomiting to control weight than those who attended the ballet school prior to the intervention. See also https://doi.org/10.1080/10640266.2017.1368866

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mavis Staines for supporting this investigation and providing access to alumni of her school. We also wish to thank Niva Piran for supporting this investigation and reviewing this manuscript.

Notes

1. The recruitment email did not indicate that participants must have graduated between 1980 and 2009. As such, the 267 responders were alumni from 1963 to 2013.

2. The ethnicity question was not added to the questionnaire until after the questionnaire had already been online for 6 days. As a result, complete data are not available for this variable.