Anorexia may spread among girls from high-achieving families, Oxford University researchers say. A study of tens of thousands of teenage girls revealed eating disorders to be more commonplace in schools where many of the parents have university degrees.
The researchers said demanding schools and parents with high aspirations may unwittingly fuel the conditions by placing too much pressure on girls. Schools with high proportions of female pupils were also hotspots for eating disorders. The study authors warned that the conditions may spread by girls copying others’ weight loss tactics in a bid to fit in. Although anorexia is often dismissed as excessive dieting, it can trigger problems from brittle bones to life-threatening heart damage. Drugs are of little help and counselling leads to as few as 10 percent of patients recovering. As a result, anorexics are about six times as likely to die young as other people.
To determine which factors increase the chances of developing eating disorders, the researchers analysed data on the schools, home lives and health of more than 55,000 girls aged 16 and over.
Some 2.4 percent had been diagnosed with an eating disorder before the age of 20.
The study found girls at schools where only a quarter of the pupils were female and only a quarter of the parents had degrees had a 1.3 percent chance of developing an eating disorder.
But if three-quarters of the pupils were girls and three-quarters of parents were highly educated, the odds rose to 3.3 percent, the International Journal of Epidemiology reports. The findings held even when other factors – such as parental wealth and mental health – were taken into account!
The data came from Sweden, but researcher Helen Bould believes the same is likely to be true in the UK.
The psychiatrist said, “Schools with more parents from more educated families may have higher aspirations and exert greater demands on their students. This may encourage perfectionism, which is strongly associated with eating disorders, as girls strive to achieve the ‘thin ideal’. Compared to their co-educated peers, girls in single-sex schools view achievement as more important and are more likely to associate intelligence and professional success with being thinner.”
It comes just weeks after Joan Bakewell blamed eating disorders on narcissism. The broadcaster and Labour peer said the rise of the problems could stem from an obsession with “being beautiful, healthy and thin”. Shortly afterwards, actress Celia Imrie said anorexics are “self-absorbed”. Their comments were widely condemned.
Dr Bould, who collaborated with researchers at University College London, Bristol University, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said obsession with weight may spread through social networks. If some girls already have eating disorders, others may feel fat and so copy their classmates.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, a leading US mental health expert, said eating disorders can “absolutely” be socially contagious.
Dr Lieberman added, “An individual begins to eat in a certain way… and some reinforcement leads to it becoming a habit… if you are in a peer environment and there is a certain type of behaviour that has some appeal, that could become something you initiate and then becomes something you can’t stop doing!”