The Psychological Effects of Eating Disorders Amongst African American and White Females - Term Paper Example

The Psychological Effects of Eating Disorders amongst African American and White Females The Psychological Effects of Eating disorders amongst African American and White Females Abstract This paper is a report on the findings from four researches that were carried out with the aim of studying the psychological effects of eating disorders amongst African American and white females. The introduction part introduces the eating disorders and gives its psychological implications. The report then gives the methods used in the research articles which include field experiments, correlations, and observation. The findings in these papers are that factor such as cultural differences, social influence, acculturation, and the media’s broad definition of beauty to can cause of eating disorders amongst African American and white females. At the implementation level the report points out that it has always been imagined that African Americans do not suffer from eating disorders. At the implementation level the reports suggest that there is a need for development of eating disorder treatment methods that are diverse since it has been proved that eating disorders affect all races. Introduction Eating disorders refer to illnesses that result in disturbance of human eating habits. Eating disorders can either lead to a decrease or increase in the rate and amount of food that affected people take. Eating disorders often have psychological effects. These psychological effects might vary in accordance to the age, race, or gender of the person suffering from the eating disorder. This report gives details of a number of researches that were carried out with the aim of finding out the psychological effects of eating disorders amongst African American and white females. The four researches that are being viewed in this report made use of a range of participants from the United States of America. The participants included female students and older ones. They also made sure that the participants were both African American and white females so that they will be able to see the variance in the psychological effects of eating disorders amongst African American and white females. Methods used in the research articles There are a number of research methods that were used in the four researches that are being reviewed in this report. The research methods that were used include field experiments, correlations, and observation. Field experiments were used in setting up artificial situations to see what the psychological effects of eating disorders are and the difference that might be between African American and white students. The correlation was specifically used in comparing the psychological problems faced by African American females and those faced by white females. Observation was generally used in observation of the behaviors of the participants and noting the differences. Findings There are a number of things that were discovered by these researches. There are some forms of eating pathology that were discovered to be more prevalent among African American women while others were discovered to be less prevalent. Those that were discovered to be more prevalent among African American female include binge eating while those that were discovered to be less prevalent include body dissatisfaction. One of the research studied factors such as the temporal stability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and internal consistency of various eating disorder measures among white and black females in the United States of America. In this study internal consistency coefficients were found to be below 76 for both African American and white females who participated in the study. However, temporal eating binge was discovered to be less stable for the African American participants. The findings in this research show that the eating disorder measures used in this study can be relied upon (Bardone-Cone & Boyd, 2007). The results also show that the Bulimia subscale of the Eating Disorder Inventory, bulimic symptom measures of the Bulimia Test-Revised, and dietary restraint measures from the TFEQ and Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire present discriminant and convergent validity in African American college women. Another research stated that a good number of measures of eating disorder symptoms were developed discriminatorily for white females. However, eating disorders affect people from all races. In fact the research reveals that African American females are more vulnerable to some eating disorders. It is always assumed that African American females are less likely to suffer from eating disorders because of the fact that their culture protects them from body image disturbance (Kashubeck-West, Coker, Awad, Stinson, Bledman & Mintz, 2013). For instance, among the African American larger body type is not seen as a problem thus women from this race less likely to suffer from eating disorders such as body classification. The researches show that culture has some effect on the rate at which women suffer from eating disorders. The most acculturate individuals were discovered to be more prone to eating disorders as compared to the participants who are less acculturate. For instance, women from communities such as the Chinese were less prone to eating disorders. On the other hand African Americans, women who were born in the United States of America by parents who are foreign born were discovered to be the most affected by eating disorders (Kelly, Mitchell, Gow, Trace, Lydecker, Bair & Mazzeo, 2012). This high rate of effect among women in this group was advocated to their high rate of acculturation. There are some social factors that were discovered to result in psychological problems of eating disorders among the individuals who were involved in these researches. A social factor such as the pervasive media images, which uses a narrow conception of beauty, was discovered to have been a cause of eating disorders, especially among the African American population (Engel, Wonderlich, Crosby, Mitchell, Grange, Crow & Gordon, 2013). This is because many women will get themselves in a condition under which they want to fit in the description of beauty, which sometimes leads them to changing their eating habits. The psychological problems that were discovered with such participants include low self-esteem and poor body image. In most cases eating disorders usually go unattended to especially with the African American women. The research advocates this problem to factors such as association of eating disorders to dysfunction or failures. Stigma of eating disorders was also discovered to be higher among African American women as compared to white women. Seeking of professional attention for eating disorders might be viewed negatively and ridiculed among the African American communities. This is the exact opposite of what happens in the white communities where such attempts are viewed as genuine attempts of treating the disorder. As a result of the difference in views it was discovered that African American women suffering from eating disorders are less likely to seek professional attention as compared to their white counterparts. Implications of the results The implication of these findings is that eating disorders will no longer be looked at as a problem of white females only. The researchers clearly proved that eating disorders not only affect women from the white communities, but women from the other races too. The only difference is that eating disorders are readily recognized as a problem among the white people communities as opposed to African American communities. This will mean that white women will be willing to seek help whenever they think that they are having eating disorders while their African American counterparts are less likely to seek these services because of cultural belief and the fear of being stigmatized. The fact that women of both races are affected implies that there should be development of symptom measures that are not only suitable for white women only but for all races. They will help in curbing the high rate in which African American women have suffered from eating disorders of late. The sad thing is that they have been going through all that suffering silently. References Bardone-Cone, A. M., & Boyd, C. A. (2007). Psychometric properties of eating disorder instruments in Black and White young women: Internal consistency, temporal stability, and validity. Psychological Assessment, 19(3), 356-362. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.19.3.356 Engel, S. G., Wonderlich, S. A., Crosby, R. D., Mitchell, J. E., Grange, D., Crow, S., & ... Gordon, K. H. (2013). The Role of Affect in the Maintenance of Anorexia Nervosa: Evidence From a Naturalistic Assessment of Momentary Behaviors and Emotion. Journal Of Abnormal Psychology, 122(3), 709-719. doi:10.1037/a0034010 Kashubeck-West, S., Coker, A. D., Awad, G. H., Stinson, R. D., Bledman, R., & Mintz, L. (2013). Do Measures Commonly Used in Body Image Research Perform Adequately With African American College Women?. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19(3), 357-368. doi:10.1037/a0031905 Kelly, N. R., Mitchell, K. S., Gow, R. W., Trace, S. E., Lydecker, J. A., Bair, C. E., & Mazzeo, S. (2012). An Evaluation of the Reliability and Construct Validity of Eating Disorder Measures in White and Black Women. Psychological Assessment, 24(3), 608-617. doi:10.1037/a0026457 Read More