Elsevier

Eating Behaviors

Volume 6, Issue 4, December 2005, Pages 318-327
Eating Behaviors

Mediators of the association between abuse and disordered eating in undergraduate men

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2005.03.004Get rights and content

Abstract

The vast majority of ED research has focused on women. However, recent studies have suggested that ED symptomatology in men may be underestimated. Additional investigations are needed to better understand EDs and their correlates among men. This study examined the relationships between childhood abuse experiences and disordered eating in male undergraduates. In addition, potential mediators and moderators of the association between abuse and disordered eating were evaluated. Results indicated that physical abuse and physical neglect were the only adverse childhood experiences associated with disordered eating. In addition, depression mediated the associations between these forms of abuse and ED symptomatology. However, neither anxiety nor alexithymia were significant mediators of the association between abuse and EDs. Social support moderated the association between physical neglect and depression, such that individuals with high social support were less depressed than those with low social support, regardless of their level of physical neglect. These results are somewhat different than those found in exclusively female samples, highlighting the importance of specifically examining EDs and their correlates among men.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 168 undergraduate male volunteers from Psychology classes at a large southeastern university. In addition to the measures described below, participants completed a demographic questionnaire. They represented the following ethnic/racial groups: 54.2% Caucasian, 26.2% African-American, 10.7% Asian-American/Asian, and 3.6% Latino/Hispanic; 4.2% reported that they belonged to another ethnic or racial group, and 1.2% did not report their ethnicity. With respect to year in school,

Descriptive statistics

Means, standard deviations, and correlations of all measures used in this study are presented in Table 1.

Prior to testing the main hypotheses of the study, we examined the prevalence of childhood abuse in our sample. Although the CTQ is scored on a 5-point scale and these polytomous scores were used in all analyses, the number of participants endorsing at least one item on each CTQ subscale was calculated in order to evaluate the frequency of each abuse type. Emotional neglect was the most

Discussion

These results add to the literature by assessing EDs and a range of associated psychological symptoms in men, as well as mediating and moderating relationships among these variables. Furthermore, these findings underscore the need for inclusion of men in studies of disordered eating. Although men and women suffering from EDs evidence similar symptomatology (e.g., Eliot & Baker, 2001), correlates of ED behaviors in men may differ. In the current study, only physical abuse and physical neglect

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by NIH Grant MH-068520. A version of this paper was presented at the annual Eating Disorders Research Society meeting in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We gratefully acknowledge Melanie Bean and Cynthia M. Bulik for their comments on a previous version of this Article.

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