Citation

Batchelder HR, Martz DM, Curtin L, Jameson JP. J. Rural Ment. Health 2022; 46(2): 140-150.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, National Association for Rural Mental Health, Publisher American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/rmh0000186

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study examined how victimization from physical and sexual interpersonal violence (IV) relates to eating disordered behaviors (EDB) in adolescents in rural Western North Carolina. The study's objective was to understand whether rural adolescents experienced similar risk for EDB from IV victimization as found in other adolescent populations in extant literature. To this end, 928 adolescents answered questions concerning various health risk behaviors, including IV and EDB. Items were extracted from a locally adapted version of the 2011-2012 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS) Survey. Base rates were calculated utilizing chi-squares analyses and compared to national norms. Multinomial logistic regressions were conducted between self-report IV variables and EDB criterion variables to identity odds ratios and their corresponding confidence intervals. While the prevalence of IV victimization tended to be lower in this rural adolescent sample compared to national norms, the use of fasting to control body weight was twice the national norm for boys and three times the national norm for rural girls. Female adolescents who reported both physical and sexual IV victimization histories had higher risk for fasting, purging, and diet pill abuse relative to those without these histories of IV. Male adolescents with a history of physical IV victimization, versus those without, were at higher risk for diet pill abuse. Because this study showed that EDBs are common in rural adolescents, future research should identify the temporal relationship between IV and EDB to inform the development of targeted interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Language: en