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Disordered Eating, Anxiety 13
Practical Uses
To date, most preventions for eating disorders have focused on increasing
awareness of eating disorders rather then providing high-risk populations with alternative
behaviors (Franko and Orosan-Weine, 1998). Written emotional disclosure is a
prevention that focuses on behavior—the act of writing may be used as a substitute for
unhealthy food behaviors, such as frequent dieting, binging, fasting, or purging.
Furthermore, written emotional disclosure is an easy program to implement—high
schools and college campuses can initiate programs that promote the benefits of writing,
thereby providing an outlet for the anxiety associated with the life changes that
accompany the completion of high school. Written emotional disclosure is also costeffective
and time-effective. New staff does not need to be hired or trained, and high-risk
populations do not have to spend time listening to lectures. Furthermore, written
emotional disclosure is location-independent, meaning that, no matter what situation
women may find themselves in, a pen and paper is almost always handy. And lastly,
written emotional disclosure could be considered a life-style change—young women will
learn to turn to writing instead of food when experiencing anxiety, and this behavior may
be sustainable well into their future.
Limitations
Several factors contributed to the non-significance of the results. Due to time and
personnel constraints, a small sample of only 56 participants was used. Perhaps, if more
participants could be run, sufficient power would be achieved to turn the trend toward
lower disordered eating symptomology into statistically significant results.
A floor-effect also obscured the effects of written emotional disclosure on the
behavioral outcome. Although the participants were prescreened for concerns about body
image and preoccupation with food, they did not represent a clinical population. Many of
the participants experienced no behavioral symptoms of disordered eating (no binging or
purging), which forced the behavioral outcome to hover close to zero and any movement
in this variable hard to detect. If a more clinical population participated in a prevention
that included written emotional disclosure, the behavioral outcome may move more
drastically.
There was also the confounding variable of the freshman fifteen. The freshman
fifteen refers to the fact that many college freshmen gain weight as a result of hormonal
and life-style changes. While weight-fluctuation is considered normal, many young
women allow this fear to take a disproportionate place of importance in their thoughts,
thus contributing to disordered eating. However, after a few months of college life, this
concern may fade in importance as other natural stressors, such as school, takes its place.
The diminishing fear of the freshman fifteen could account for the reduction in the
behavioral measure of disordered eating symptomology as the semester progressed. The
present study should be conducted in the spring semester to avoid this confounding
variable, or it should incorporate freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
Lastly, the lack of a distinction between the written emotional disclosure
condition and the neutral writing condition eliminated a true control group. A third, nonwriting
control group needs to be added that would separate the effect of writing in
general from the effect of writing about anxiety in particular.