Eating Disorders: More Male Adolescents Struck by Body Image Issues

Eating disorders have always been stereotyped as a primarily female issue.

In the United States alone, statistics show that roughly 20 million women and 10 million men will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder in their lifetime, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorders or an eating disorder that's not otherwise specified (EDNOS).

And though eating disorders continue to affect more women than men, a recent study debunks the myth that males are rarely affected by challenges associated with body image.

A recent study that looked at 5,527 teenage males from across the United States showed that 17.9 percent of adolescent boys were extremely concerned with their weight and physique and more at risk to engage in risky behaviors, including drug use and binge drinking.

"Males and females have very different concerns about their weight and appearance," the study's lead author Alison Field, ScD, from Boston Children's Hospital Adolescent Medicine Division said, via a press release. Evaluations for eating disorders have been developed to reflect girls' concerns with thinness but not boys' concerns, which may be more focused on muscularity than thinness.

To better understand how symptoms of eating disorders may be linked to obesity, drug use and depression in males, Field and colleagues reviewed responses to questionnaires that were completed as part of the Growing Up Today Study. Teens in the survey responded to surveys every 12 to 36 months from 1999 through 2010.

Findings showed that boys tended to be more interested in muscularity than thinness, with 9.2 percent reporting concerns regarding muscularity, and 2.5 percent reporting concerns regarding thinness. Others also reported concerns regarding other aspects of appearance at 6.3 percent.

Yet results showed that those more concerned with muscularity were more likely to take unhealthy supplements, use growth hormone, steroids or binge drink. Those more concerned with thinness, on the other hand, were more likely to develop depressive symptoms.

Some of the participants also had a binge-eating disorder, at 2.9 percent, and nearly one-third reported infrequent binge eating, purging or overeating.

"Clinicians may not be aware that some of their male patients are so preoccupied with their weight and shape that they are using unhealthy methods to achieve the physique they desire, and parents are not aware that they should be as concerned about eating disorders and an excessive focus on weight and shape in their sons as in their daughters," Field said, via the release.

More information regarding the study can be found via JAMA Pediatrics.