Eating disorders,body satisfaction and unwanted sexual experience: U.K., Australian and U.S. data

The extent to which eating disorders may be associated with sexual abuse or unwanted sexual experience has been assessed by a number of studies and findings have been conflicting. The present study describes three clinical samples of eating disorder patients from the U.K., Australia and the U.S.A. who completed a sexual events questionnaire. Within the U.K. sample, comparisons were also made across diagnostic categories to test the hypothesis that unwanted sexual experience might be associated with bulimic symptomatology. U.K. comparisons showed little difference in reporting between diagnostic groups. The comparisons across the three countries showed high levels of consistency of responses on most items, although there were differences between the samples on rates of reporting of sexual contact with a biologically close male relative. While the U.K. group showed some association between body dissatisfaction and unwanted sexual experience, this was not the case for the Australian sample. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.