A Plea for Diversity in Eating Disorders Research

Eating disorders (EDs) are often stereotyped as affecting the SWAG, that is, as affecting mostly skinny, White, affluent girls. Over the last decade, however, significant progress has been made toward increasing diversity in ED research. There is consensus that EDs affect individuals of all genders,...

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Published inFrontiers in psychiatry Vol. 13; p. 820043
Main Authors Halbeisen, Georg, Brandt, Gerrit, Paslakis, Georgios
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 18.02.2022
Subjects
eating disorders
ethnic bias
gender bias
medical education
Psychiatry
sexual minority
social diversity
gender bias
eating disorders
medical education
sexual minority
ethnic bias
social diversity
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Summary:Eating disorders (EDs) are often stereotyped as affecting the SWAG, that is, as affecting mostly skinny, White, affluent girls. Over the last decade, however, significant progress has been made toward increasing diversity in ED research. There is consensus that EDs affect individuals of all genders, ages, sexual orientations, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, with recent studies exploring social determinants of ED etiology, ED presentation, and developing diversity-affirming ED assessments. This article provides a brief summary of current developments related to diversity as a research theme, and proposes different perspectives toward further improving diversity in ED research. Specifically, we argue for exploring the role of diversity in ED treatment settings and outcomes, for pursuing diversity-oriented research pro-actively rather than as a reaction to issues of under-representation, and for integrating diversity across different areas of medical education and trainings in psychotherapy. Limitations with respect to the paucity of research, and the link between diversity as a research theme and ED-related workforce diversity are discussed.
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Edited by: Stephan Zipfel, University of Tübingen, Germany
Reviewed by: Mae Lynn Reyes-Rodriguez, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States; Erin Cecilia Accurso, University of California, San Francisco, United States
This article was submitted to Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry
ISSN:1664-0640
1664-0640
DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.820043