NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who visit web sites that promote eating disorders are more apt than women who do not to have poor body image and abnormal eating habits, a study suggests.
This study, "although not able to provide a causal connection, has established that there is an association between viewing these pro-eating disorder web sites and body dissatisfaction and disordered eating," Dr. J. Kevin Thompson, a psychologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa told Reuters Health.
Web sites that endorse the "anorexic lifestyle" by promoting a range of eating disordered behaviors may potentially contribute to the development of eating disorders, Thompson and colleagues note in this month's edition of the International Journal of Eating Disorders. These web sites actively promote eating disorders as a way to lose weight and include tips on how to maintain an eating disorder along with encouragement to do so.
Thompson and colleagues asked 1,575 female under grads if they had ever visited pro-eating disorder sites, eating disorder sites that provide clinical information about eating disorders, or eating disorder recovery sites.
A total of 199 (13 percent) reported viewing one or more of the three types of web sites. Thirty-one viewed solely pro-eating disorder web sites, 87 viewed only professional web sites and 6 viewed only recovery web sites.
According to Thompson's team, the pro-eating disorder web site surfers scored higher on levels of eating and body image disturbances than women who visited the professional eating disorder web sites.
Women who frequented pro-eating disorder sites also had higher levels of body dissatisfaction and eating disturbances than a comparison group of 1,376 women who did not visit any eating disorder web sites.
The findings, the investigators say, offer "moderate evidence" indicating that views of pro-eating disorder sites have a distorted view of their body and disturbed eating patterns.
"We cannot rule out the possibility," Thompson noted, "that individuals with higher levels of eating and body image disturbances may elect to view such web sites and that the web sites don't necessarily cause higher levels of disturbance. A longitudinal study is needed to clarify the connection."
SOURCE: International Journal of Eating Disorders, January 2008.
Reuters Health
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