SHARJAH // The number of teenage girls at risk of developing an eating disorder is increasing, new research suggests.
A study in Sharjah of 500 schoolgirls aged 15-18 found 37.8 per cent had attitudes that indicated or could lead to a disorder.
The figure is an increase of 14 percentage points, or more than 60 per cent, compared with a similar survey in 2006.
“The results confirm that [eating disorder attitudes] are on the rise among adolescent schoolgirls in Sharjah, as compared to previous literature,” said Dr Mirey Karavetian, clinical dietician and assistant professor at Zayed University.
Globalisation and changing attitudes are among the reasons for the increase, said Alla Mansour, 22, from Sharjah, who conducted the survey as part of her undergraduate research at Zayed University in Dubai, under the supervision of Dr Karavetian.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, people used to think heavier women were more attractive,” she said. “I think this is not the idea any longer.”
For the study, Ms Mansour used the Eating Attitudes Test – a widely used, 26-question test for measuring symptoms of eating disorders.
She recorded the girls’ height and weight, and then conducted in-depth interviews with about 50 girls who seemed to display the most symptoms.
Many of the girls surveyed felt overweight or were dissatisfied with their bodies despite having normal body-mass indexes, said Ms Mansour.
Family – and, surprisingly, schools – play a major role in this attitude, she said.
Parents, siblings and other family members may tell girls they look fat or must go on a diet, or to lose weight so she can get married, said Ms Mansour, and they may be unaware that these pressures can lead to behaviour or attitudes that could develop into a disorder.
“This is shocking because if they family knew, they would stop. But they don’t know – they just do it.”
One of the girls Ms Mansour interviewed may have had anorexia nervosa, she said, though she did not carry out clinical tests.
“She had all the symptoms of anorexia nervosa, from cutting herself to avoiding eating to just eating 200 calories a day,” said Ms Mansour.
Ms Mansour was also shocked to find that teachers may also lack awareness, and inadvertantly put pressure on girls. Two girls remembered a teacher who commented on their weight or called them fat – leading them to want to change their eating patterns.
“It’s really shocking. It’s not supposed to be like this,” said Ms Mansour.
Dr Jennifer Blake, an American family medicine doctor at Al Zahra Medical Centre in Dubai, says that among adolescents in both the UAE and the United States there is less awareness about what it means to eat healthily.
In her practice she has seen that families may not know about adolescents’ body-image issues.
“What I see more often is the adolescent who is overweight or whose BMI does not fall into the normal range – and you can’t generalise and not every place is exactly the same – but what I see most often is that the family is unaware how the adolescent is feeling about themselves.
“Unless the family had another relative or member that has gone through any type of an eating disorder, I don’t know that they would be able to recognise that on their own without their provider pointing it out.”
Rather than promoting a healthy approach to nutrition, such as a well-balanced diet and exercise, families may encourage someone to just eliminate foods, she said.
“I would agree [with the research] in terms of pressure from the family, but I don’t see the family stressing the right approach.”
Eating disorders are conditions that can affect a person physically, psychologically and socially. The three most common disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating.
Symptoms may include missing meals, complaining of being fat despite having normal weight or being underweight, repeatedly weighing themselves, and feeling uncomfortable or refusing to eat in public.
lcarroll@thenational.ae
