We’ve begun to scratch the surface of the vast and growing literature on cultural context and eating disorders in the previous 4 posts in this series. Of course, as I reflected the other day, there could (maybe should?) be a blog solely devoted to this topic- each time I read another study in this area, it pulls me down the rabbit hole into another related area.
In what will be the last part of this series for now, I’ll review a study by Bennett, Sharpe, Freeman, and Carson (2004) on the request of Lisa LaBorde (via Twitter). The authors wanted to learn more about the presence (or lack thereof) of eating disorders in Sub-Saharan Africa, a context that they describe as less driven by the thin-ideal. This was, they suggest, the first thorough exploration of anorexia in sub-Saharan Africa, and so might reveal more about whether and how anorexia nervosa is present in area of the world that is differently positioned on the world stage than Western societies.
THE STUDY
Bennett et al. selected 2 high schools located …
- Devil in the Details: Can Poor Cognitive Function be Attributed to Anorexia Nervosa Patients’ Obsession with Detail?
- Is Anorexia Nervosa an Anxiety Disorder?
- Setting a Target Weight: An Arbitrary Exercise?