Eating Disorder News

Anorexia and other eating disorders are most commonly diagnosed among adolescent girls and young women, but can also occur among pre-teens at much younger ages. A study published last spring in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology by Hayley Dohnt at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, found that some girls as young as six were already becoming concerned about their weight, and that by their second year of primary school, 71 percent of the girls wanted to be thinner, partly due to peer influence after starting school.

From BBC News:

Researcher Hayley Dohnt, who led the study, said: “Previously, research has focused on adolescence as the likely time for the emergence of body dissatisfaction.

“However, clear evidence has accumulated that a substantial number of pre-adolescent girls are dissatisfied with their bodies and wish to be thinner.”

She added: “Previous research has also focused on parental influence as the most salient source of information for young children.

“However, the major life event which occurs over the five - seven year age range, when body dissatisfaction begins, is the commencement of schooling.

“Therefore, peer influence, which has been investigated extensively for adolescents but has been assumed as more or less irrelevant for young children, may in fact be particularly salient for this age group”.

A spokesman for the UK’s Eating Disorders Association said: “Eating disorders have been recorded in children as young as eight, and there may have been instances in children of an even younger age.

Despite these findings, eating disorders are uncommon among pre-teens.

“The fact remains that the key age for developing eating disorders is 13-15.”

• BBC: Six-year-olds ‘want to be thin’
• Australian Current Affairs PM (public radio) transcript of March 8, 2005 interview with Hayley Dohnt

Tags: anorexia, parenting, children