Behaviors and attitudes related to eating disorders in homosexual male college students.

To investigate whether homosexuality predisposes males to eating disorders, the authors studied 48 nonpatient homosexual male students at UCLA. The homosexual men had higher prevalences of binge-eating problems, of feeling fat in spite of others' perceptions, of feeling terrified of being fat, and of having used diuretics than other male students. They also scored higher on the Eating Disorders Inventory scales for drive for thinness, interoceptive awareness, bulimia, body dissatisfaction, maturity fears, and ineffectiveness. One of the 48 homosexual men and one of the 300 comparison group men met criteria for probable past histories of eating disorders.