More than Half of High School Students Report Disordered Eating: A Cross Sectional Study among Norwegian Boys and Girls

Abstract

Disordered eating and eating disorders are of great concern due to their associations with physical and mental health risks. Even if adolescence has been identified as the most vulnerable time for developing disordered eating, few studies have used a broad spectrum of criteria to investigate the prevalence of disordered eating among high school students of both genders, in different programs of study, nor assessed correlates of disordered eating among this important target group. The purposes of this study were therefore to investigate the prevalence and correlates of disordered eating among both male and female high school students in sport-, general and vocational programs. A comprehensive questionnaire was completed by 2,451 students (98.7%), aged 15–17 years. The total prevalence of disordered eating was 54.9%, with 64.3% among girls and 45.0% among boys (p<0.001). The highest prevalence of disordered eating was found among vocational students (60.7%), followed by students in general programs (49.8%) and sport students (38.3%) (p<0.001). Female gender, school program (vocational and general), overweight/obesity and weight regulation were positively associated with disordered eating. The high prevalence indicates the importance of tailored prevention efforts directed at high school students, particularly in vocational programs. Furthermore, a smaller girls–boys ratio than expected indicates that the efforts to identify and manage disordered eating among high school students should include both genders.

Body Image and Disturbed Eating Attitudes and Behaviors in Sport-Involved Adolescents: The Role of Gender and Sport Characteristics

“…DEABs in both genders might also be explored using more complex information (including BMI, drive for muscularity and drive for thinness, history of disordered eating, etc.) as reported in the other studies [4]. It would be reasonable to assess the body image and DEABs in the classification groups of weight-sensitive sports, i.e., in gravitational, weight class, and aesthetically judged sports [21] in larger samples in future studies.…”

“…Unfortunately, the results of the studies on the prevalence of DEABs in sport involved adolescents and controls are inconsistent. Some studies showed a higher prevalence of disordered eating among the controls compared to the athletes [4,24,32,33]. Other studies concluded that athletes competing in weight-sensitive sports reported greater rates of eating pathologies [34][35][36], however, other studies in elite adolescent athletes did not confirm these findings [32,37].…”

“…Body image concerns and body dissatisfaction are highly prevalent in adolescents worldwide [1][2][3][4][5]. Studies have demonstrated that adolescents' body image concerns are associated with disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors (DEABs) that might be the precursor of clinical eating disorders [6,7].…”

“…Body image concerns, specifically, body dissatisfaction is the precursor of DEAB's. DEABs have been increasingly studied in samples of adolescents that participate in sports [4,8,[23][24][25]. Studies demonstrated that DEABs contribute to poor health and performance in sport, musculoskeletal injury, the development of female and male athlete triad [26][27][28][29], and drop out from sport [30,31].…”

Eating disorder symptoms across the weight spectrum in Australian adolescents

“…In doing so, such methods typically result in much higher prevalence estimates(Torstveit, Aagedal-Mortensen, & Stea, 2015;Vega Alonso, Rasillo Rodriguez, Lozano Alonso, Rodriguez Carretero, & Martin, 2005). In doing so, such methods typically result in much higher prevalence estimates(Torstveit, Aagedal-Mortensen, & Stea, 2015;Vega Alonso, Rasillo Rodriguez, Lozano Alonso, Rodriguez Carretero, & Martin, 2005).…”