Eating Disorders And Athletic Participation - 2416 Words

Eating Disorders and Athletic Participation Over the past twenty years, there has been a great increase of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa which have come out as major psychological and health problems. This increase in eating disorders has resulted from the intense societal pressure to diet and conform to an unrealistic weight and body size. For the general population of women, the lifetime number of anorexia nervosa is approximately 0.7%, and that of bulimia nervosa is as high as 10.3% ( Taub Blinde, 1992). Since many athletes contain almost the same behaviors to those with eating disorders, there has also been an increase in interest in whether athletes are at a risk for eating disorders. An increase risk of eating disorders†¦show more content†¦Although these characteristics may lead athletes to eating disorders, some of these behaviors can also be helpful to their sport. For example, the drive for perfectionism can help increase athletic performance and success. It may also help in other areas of their live such as school and in social relationships. Studies Several of the early studies which attempted to guess the number of eating disorders among athletes produced many mixed results. Some studies labeled college athletes as high risk, whereas others have found no support for such a label. The guesses widely varied going from 1% in anorexia and up to 30% in bulimia. In 1993, Sundgot-Borden and Larsen compared eating disorder related things across sport categories with female college students and a female medical-based population. Their results showed that athletes involved in endurance and ball game sports did not differ on eating disorder related things, and were not at risk for eating disorder related things. Unfortunately, these early studies were not properly managed, for there existed a variety of methodological limits such as sampling procedure problems as well as small sample sizes which cannot be representative of a whole population. A more difficult 1994 study by Sundgot-Borgen, used a self-report combined with an interview, whi ch questioned 522 elite female athletes. His results indicated that