{"id":5641,"date":"2024-04-29T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T09:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/?p=5641"},"modified":"2024-05-01T11:42:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T10:42:47","slug":"binge-type-eating-disorders-is-ethnicity-associated-with-the-rate-of-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/2024\/04\/29\/binge-type-eating-disorders-is-ethnicity-associated-with-the-rate-of-diagnosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Binge-type eating disorders: is ethnicity associated with the rate of diagnosis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog looks at the key takeaways from a\u00a0<\/a>report<\/a>\u00a0that was produced as a part of the King\u2019s Undergraduate Research Fellowship 2022 at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre in Denmark Hill, London.<\/em><\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Mohini, undergraduate research fellowship student<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder are binge-type eating disorders<\/strong>, which means they involve\u00a0recurring episodes of binge eating<\/strong>. This is where a person experiences a lack of control over what and how much they are eating, leading them to eat more than what most individuals would under the same circumstances. Research into these disorders (their development,\u00a0diagnosis\u00a0and treatment) is incredibly important as these binge-type eating disorders account for\u00a041% of all individuals who have experienced an\u00a0eating disorder in their\u00a0life<\/a>. Additionally, eating disorders can cause physical, psychological, and emotional damage, and have a\u00a0higher financial burden than that of\u00a0anxiety and\u00a0depression<\/a>. Historically, there has been\u00a0minimal research into eating disorders within minoritised ethnic\u00a0communities<\/a>. Recently, however, there have been\u00a0advances in our\u00a0understanding<\/a>; we need to continue making these advances to improve the experiences of individuals from these backgrounds.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The project<\/strong><\/p>\n

This project aimed to look at\u00a0whether being of a minoritised ethnic background in the\u00a0UK<\/strong>, and therefore not having a\u00a0culturally-mainstream\u00a0experience of healthcare services,\u00a0is associated with whether an individual is clinically diagnosed<\/strong>\u00a0with a binge-type eating disorder. There was also a focus on the\u00a0correct use of terminology in scientific research<\/strong>, steering away from the use of \u201cBAME\/BME\u201d or \u201cEthnic minorities\u201d.\u00a0Instead, we used the term \u201cMinoritised Ethnicities.<\/a>\u201d\u00a0This term highlights that minoritised ethnic communities have been belittled\u00a0as a result of\u00a0the social domination of another ethnic group within the\u00a0UK, and\u00a0shows that the ethnicities covered in this umbrella term do not all have a singular cultural experience of healthcare services.<\/p>\n

We used data from participants of three, large UK-based mental health studies (the\u00a0GLAD\u00a0Study<\/a>,\u00a0EDGI\u00a0UK<\/a>* and the\u00a0COPING\u00a0Study<\/a>) who were asked about any eating disorder symptoms they may have experienced in their life, as well as any psychiatric disorder\u00a0diagnoses\u00a0they had ever received from a healthcare professional. We also looked at data on the ethnic origin of the participants.<\/p>\n

Our findings<\/strong><\/p>\n

We started by looking at the numbers of people who a) met the clinical criteria for at least one binge-type eating disorder as identified in our questionnaire and b) reported that they had been diagnosed by a healthcare professional.\u00a0To produce the rates of diagnosis, the number of participants who had both a self-reported clinical diagnosis\u00a0and a symptom-based questionnaire diagnosis was divided by the total number of participants with at least a symptom-based questionnaire diagnosis.<\/p>\n

We then looked at this proportion across two different ranges of ethnic groups (a \u2018broad\u2019 range, and a more \u2018in-depth\u2019 range): the \u2018broad\u2019 range\u00a0consisted\u00a0of the \u201cWhite\u201d,\u00a0\u201cMinoritised Ethnicities\u201d and \u201cOther\u201d samples, and the \u2018in-depth\u2019 range further splits apart the individual ethnic groups that make up \u201cMinoritised Ethnicities\u201d (\u201cMixed\u201d,<\/a>\u00a0\u201cAsian or Asian British\u201d,\u00a0\u201cBlack or Black British\u201d and \u201cArab\u201d).<\/p>\n

Both the \u201cWhite\u201d and \u201cMinoritised Ethnicities\u201d samples were similar with regards to their sex and levels of education. However, the \u201cWhite\u201d sample was, on average, slightly older than their \u201cMinoritised Ethnicities\u201d counterparts.<\/p>\n

We found\u00a0no significant difference in rates of clinical diagnosis<\/strong>\u00a0between the \u201cWhite\u201d (23.67%) and \u201cMinoritised Ethnic\u201d (20.65%) samples (Figure 1), or between comparisons of each more in-depth ethnic categories from the secondary analysis. However, it is not known whether this is a truly non-significant finding as the\u00a0\u201cMinoritised Ethnic\u201d sample size is very small (n<\/em>\u00a0= 276)\u00a0<\/strong>and therefore likely does not accurately reflect the UK population. It is also much smaller than the \u201cWhite\u201d sample (n<\/em>\u00a0= 6,281).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Key summary points & reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

The results of this project highlighted that there is an\u00a0overall low rate of clinical diagnosis for binge-type eating disorders<\/strong>\u00a0(~20%)<\/strong>\u00a0in those who met the criteria for a binge-type eating disorder via the symptom-based questionnaire. This low rate\u00a0needs to be addressed, particularly when comparing it to the number of participants who have met clinical criteria for a binge-type eating disorder. Moreover, our results stress the importance of\u00a0increasing engagement of \u201cMinoritised Ethnic\u201d participants<\/strong>\u00a0in eating disorder research, as the \u201cWhite\u201d sample had 6,281 participants, whilst the \u201cAsian and Asian British\u201d sample had 58 participants, and the \u201cBlack and Black British\u201d sample had only 26 participants. This can be achieved by increasing funding in the hugely underfunded area that is eating disorder research\u00a0(<\/a>particularly in comparison to other mental\u00a0illness\u00a0research<\/a>)<\/a>. From this, engagement campaigns can be created, which could help\u00a0overcome the current under-representation in eating disorder research<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Acknowledgements<\/strong><\/p>\n

Special thanks to the\u00a0SGDP\u00a0Centre Anti-Racism Working Group<\/a>\u00a0for supervising and supporting this project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog looks at the key takeaways from a\u00a0report\u00a0that was produced as a part of the King\u2019s Undergraduate Research Fellowship 2022 at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre in Denmark Hill, London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":5643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[366],"tags":[446,400],"class_list":["post-5641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anti-racism","tag-kurf","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5641"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5654,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641\/revisions\/5654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/editlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}