Ethnic Variations in Psychosocial and Health Correlates of Eating Disorders

The aim of this study is to explore ethnic variations in psychosocial and health correlates of eating disorders in the United States, Specifically, we compared associations between gender, socioeconomic status (SES), body mass index (BMI), physical and mental self-rated health (SRH), and major depressive disorder (MDD) with eating disorders (EDs) across 10 different ethnic groups in the United States. Data was obtained from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), a national household probability sample collected in 2001–2003. Data for this study included a sample of 17,729 individuals with the following ethnic profile: 520 Vietnamese, 508 Filipino, 600 Chinese, 656 Other Asian, 577 Cuban, 495 Puerto Rican, 1442 Mexican, 1106 Other Hispanic, 4746 African American, and 7587 Non-Latino Whites. Gender, SES (education and income), BMI, SRH, MDD, and presence of EDs were measured across different ethnic groups. Logistic regression analysis was conducted for each ethnic group with lifetime EDs as the main outcome. Ethnic group varied in psychosocial and health correlates of EDs. In most ethnic groups, gender and SES were not associated with EDs. In almost all ethnic groups, EDs were associated with MDD and BMI. EDs were found to be associated with SRH in half of the ethnic groups studied. The associations between gender, SES, BMI, SRH, MDD, and EDs vary across different ethnic groups. These differences must be considered in further studies and in clinical practice in order to improve our approach towards diagnosis and treatment of EDs.