Eating disorder attitudes and psychopathology in Caucasian Australian, Asian Australian and Thai university students Piangchai S. Jennings, David Forbes, Brett McDermott, Gary Hulse, Sato Juniper Objective: To examine eating disorder attitudes and psychopathology among female university students in Australia and Thailand. Method: Participants were 110 Caucasian Australians, 130 Asian Australians and 101 Thais in Thailand. The instruments included the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) and the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI). Results: Eating disorder attitudes and psychopathology scores in the Thai group were found to be highest. The Asian Australian group did not have significantly higher scores on the EAT-26 than the Caucasian Australian group, but had higher scores in some subscales of the EDI-2. That the Thai group had the highest scores in susceptibility to developing an eating disorder and eating disorder psychopathology may be partially explained in sociocultural terms, with pressure to be thin more extreme in Thailand than in Australia. The evidence suggested that unhealthy eating disorder psychopathology is not limited to Western societies but is already present in Thai and other Asian societies. Key words: attitudes, EAT, eating disorders, EDI, ethnicity, psychopathology. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2006; 40:143–149 Eating disorders have been described as culture-bound syndromes associated with Western or Caucasian soci- eties [1–3] and thought to be rare in Asian and non- Western societies [4,5], although there is written evidence in Western societies of anorexia [6] and bulimia [7] far back in the Medieval period. However, current research and documents from Asia challenge this culture-bound notion. Research in Asian Piangchai S. Jennings (Correspondence); Brett McDermott, Associate Pro- fessor; Gary Hulse, Professor School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, at UDP Level 4, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, The University of Western Australia, GPO Box D184, Perth, Western Australia 6840, Australia. Email: pjenning@cyllene.uwa.edu.au David Forbes, Associate Professor School of Paediatrics and Child Health, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia Sato Juniper, MD Postgraduate Research and Scholarships Office, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia, Australia Received 12 May 2004; revised 5 May 2005; accepted 19 May 2005. countries demonstrates that eating disorders do occur in Asian settings. Most articles are from Japan, which has records of anorexia in the twelfth century [8]. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are now considered common psychiatric disorders in Japan [8,9]. Hong Kong is the second most advanced country in Asia in terms of eating disorders research. Most studies have been done by Lee et al. [10–14]. In contrast to West- ern research findings, they noticed that bulimia nervosa was rarer than anorexia nervosa in Hong Kong [12]. Thailand has rapidly changed from an agricultural to an industrial society, especially from 1978 to 1988, as shown by the ratio of export goods [15]. In the same period, globalization has brought a culture of thinness from the west, which rapidly spread to Thai adolescents through the daily media [16], with female ideal body image reported to change from being plump to being thin [17]. The changing lifestyles in Thailand may also contribute to the greater emergence of eating disorders, with obe- sity reported to be a premorbid condition of anorexia C ⃝ 2006 The Authors Journal compilation C ⃝ 2006 The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists at James Cook University on July 10, 2016 anp.sagepub.com Downloaded from