Eating-disorder education shows unintended effects

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Teaching teenagers about eating disorders can make them more knowledgeable about the problem, but it may also have some inadvertent effects, a new study suggests.

Yale University researchers found that when they presented female high school students with videos on eating disorders, it met the intended goal of boosting their knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.

However, the team saw that the students didn't necessarily find the results of eating disorders unappealing. Teens who watched a video featuring a woman recovering from an eating disorder became more likely to view girls with eating disorders as "very pretty," and some thought it would be "nice to look like" the woman in the video.

The findings suggest that more research should go into the unintended effects of eating disorder education before such programs are widely used, the researchers conclude in their article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

"It seems intuitively appealing to have recovered patients get up in front of high school or college-aged girls and tell the story of their eating disorder and recovery," lead study author Dr. Marlene B. Schwartz told Reuters Health.

However, she explained, there's also the argument that having an attractive, articulate woman talk about her eating disorder could inadvertently "glamorize" the condition.

To investigate the question, Schwartz and her colleagues had 376 female high school students view one of two videos on eating disorders. Both videos were the same, except for the "presenter." In one video, the presenter was a young woman identified as a doctor, who told the story of a typical eating disorder patient; in the other, the woman was a "recovered eating disorder patient" who described her personal experience.

The students completed questionnaires before and after the video.