History of bullying, abuse, and other stressful life events in individuals with eating disorders

Abstract

Bullying and other stressful life events can negatively impact mental health and increase risk for a range of psychiatric disorders, including eating disorders (EDs). This thesis explored history of such events in individuals with and without EDs.

An initial systematic review and meta-analysis showed an association between bullying and EDs, with particularly consistent findings for binge-eating types of EDs. To further explore this, a case-control study of 916 individuals with and without a lifetime history of EDs was conducted using self-report measures of bullying and other stressful life events (e.g., sexual assault, emotional abuse, and bereavement). ED subtypes were explored separately to investigate differences between the ED diagnoses.

As hypothesised, exposure to different types of bullying was significantly more common in individuals with EDs (32%) than controls (19%). Subtype analyses showed that this was due to individuals with binge-eating/purging EDs experiencing more bullying than controls. The same was found for other stressful events, with the ED group reporting more stressful events (81%) than controls (65%). Specifically, experiences of rape, other sexual assault, and emotional abuse were significantly more common in binge-eating/purging EDs.

The pattern of results for both bullying and other types of stressful life events shows that these experiences are common among individuals with EDs, particularly binge-eating/purging subtypes. Further studies are needed to establish the nature of these associations, but we highlight the importance of considering a variety of past experiences in risk assessment and treatment for different EDs.