NEW YORK, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Doctors say that eating disorders appear to be on the rise among black and Hispanic women in the United States.
But minority women who suffer from anorexia or bulimia face some hurdles, the New York Times reports. Eating disorders tend to be associated with young middle-class white women, so medical personnel are less likely to diagnose them in African-Americans and Hispanics, and treatment programs are often geared to majority needs and expectations.
Studies by Ruth Striegel-Moore, chair of the psychology department at Wesleyan University, have found that young black women are as likely as white women to acknowledge binge eating, and that black women were as likely to report vomiting and more likely to report using diuretics and laxatives to lose weight.
Another study at Florida State University found 150 people asked to read the biography of a fictional 16-year-old girl were far more likely to say she had an eating disorder when she was described as white.
