New global perspectives on eating disorders

• Published in: Culture, medicine and psychiatry medicine and psychiatry, 2004-12, Vol.28 (4), p.433-437
• Main Author: Becker, Anne E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Anorexia; Anorexia nervosa; Attitudes; Body; Body weight; Bulimia; Child; Children; Cultural differences; Cultural factors; Culture; Disorders; Eating disorders; Epidemiology; Ethnicity; Feeding and Eating Disorders - mortality; Feeding and Eating Disorders - prevention & control; Female; Gender stereotypes; Girls; Globalization; Hispanic Americans; Humans; International Cooperation; Male; Medicine; Mental disorders; Mental health; Mental illness; Minority & ethnic groups; Modernization; Physical appearance; Population; Population studies; Psychiatry; Salience; Self image; Social change; Social environment; Sociocultural factors; Stereotypes; Studies; Westernization; Women
• ISSN: 0165-005X; 1573-076X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11013-004-1063-9

[...]eating disorders can have a devastating impact on affected children, adults, and their families.Next, contrary to former prevailing stereotypes that eating disorders selectively burden privileged girls and young women, these illnesses affect men and women of diverse ages and social backgrounds. Specifically, population studies have mainly reported results based on assessments developed for Western populations, calling into question both cross-cultural comparability and local validity of findings. [...]few of these population studies have featured qualitative data, resulting in interpretation of findings with insufficient social or cultural context. The potential contributions of ethnographic data and social analyses have been largely untapped and the critical integration among psychological, epidemiologic and anthropological perspectives necessary to move the field forward has not yet been made. [...]this issue of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry is also motivated by our recognition that eating disorders comprise a group of illnesses with complex grounding in their social context and an exciting territory for cross-disciplinary workWe are pleased to present a collection of articles and commentaries in this issue that contribute to this growing cross-cultural literature on eating disorders and social transition. Because a culturally driven quest for thinness has been presumed to motivate dieting and purging behaviors that may segue to eating disorders, culture-specific variation in weight and body shape concerns are likely to have a major impact on incidence, phenomenology, course, outcome, and (local) cultural salience of these disorders.