DISORDERED EATING, WEIGHT DISSATISFACTION AND DIETING IN RELATION TO UNWANTED CHILDHOOD SEXUAL EXPERIENCES IN A COMMUNITY SAMPLE

A study was conducted to examine the relationships among eating pathol ogy, weight dissatisfaction and dieting, and unwanted sexual experienc es in childhood. An unselected community sample of 201 young and 268 m iddle-aged women were administered questionnaires assessing eating beh aviors and attitudes, and past and current sexual abuse. Results showe d differential relationships among these factors for the two age cohor ts: for young women, past sexual abuse predicted weight dissatisfactio n, but not dieting or disordered eating behaviors, whereas for middle- aged women, past abuse was predictive of disordered eating, but not di eting or weight dissatisfaction. Current physical or sexual abuse was also found to be predictive of disordered eating for the young women. These findings underscore the complexity of the relationships among un wanted sexual experiences and eating and weight pathology, and suggest that the timing of sexual abuse, and the age of the woman, are import ant mediating factors. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.