Autostraddle: What Queers Need To Know About Eating Disorders
1. Queer people are often at higher risk of eating disorders than cisgender-heterosexual people
Depending on your sources, we either have alarmingly heightened rates of eating disorder prevalence, or generally higher rates. With some mixed numbers. We’re shockingly vulnerable to eating disorders overall, but we’ve been made into a ‘lost’ population in research and treatment.
Eating disorders rarely show up unprompted. They’re often driven by a constellation of mental distress that gradually disrupts our eating patterns. Clinical psychologist Dr. Courtney Crisp says, “because the queer community tends to be exposed to more trauma and minority stress due to discrimination, this can lead to an increased risk for eating disorders.”
The mental distress we experience due to marginalization stacks up fast. Most of us won’t develop a severe eating disorder, but I dare say any of us who have anxiety or depression can identify disrupted eating patterns in our lives.
Our heightened risk for eating disorders also mixes with a lack of treatment. Dr. Crisp writes succinctly that, “Eating disorders are often thought of as a thin, cisgender white women’s disease, which does not tell the whole story.” That image has become the ‘typical’ eating disorder sufferer, leaving a range of people and conditions (like binge-eating) behind.