More girls, more frequent food-related anxieties

New research has found that young women with eating disorders are more likely to go to schools with more girls, and with more highly educated parents. Research author Helen Bould explores why this might be.

Are young women more likely to get eating disorders because of their school environment?
Are young women more likely to get eating disorders because of their school environment? Photograph: Eye Ubiquitous/Alamy

Diagnosed eating disorders are more common in some schools than others: schools with greater proportions of female students, and schools with higher numbers of children with university-educated parents. These were the headline results of our study, published last week in the International Journal of Epidemiology (open access).

Eating disorders are serious illnesses (someone with bulimia nervosa is around twice as likely to die young as someone without it; someone with anorexia nervosa about six times more likely), so this might make us worry about the effect of all-girls private or selective state schools on the mental health of young women – but should it?