"More than just research": Tragedy inspires faculty to study eating disorders

Moved by the bulimia-related death of a YSU Human Ecology student in 2012, six faculty members spent the last three years studying eating disorders in college students and how to prevent them.

What they learned, and published recently in the journal Cojent Psychology, is that college-age women are especially vulnerable to body dissatisfaction and appearance-related anxiety that can lead to unhealthy, disordered eating habits.

For some, especially when combined with clinical depression, those attitudes are risk factors for deadly eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.

“In our culture, we’ve come to a place where it’s normal, especially for women, to feel bad about their appearance,” said Priscilla Gitimu, associate professor of Fashion and Interior Merchandising and principal investigator for the study. “We need to change that kind of thinking.”

Through their work, she said, the research team hopes to counteract the culture’s overemphasis on physical appearance and to heighten healthcare professionals’ awareness so they can spot the early signs of disordered eating.

Mary Ann Peters of Austintown knows first-hand that an eating disorder can be hard to diagnose until it’s too late. It was her daughter Danielle, 21, and a YSU freshman when she passed away of complications from bulimia, who inspired the research. “It makes me feel that my daughter’s life had a purpose,” Peters said.

Danielle Peters may have struggled secretly with bulimia for years, her mother said, but she wasn’t diagnosed until shortly before her death. “Her health was declining, and we went to so many doctors and counselors, but she was hiding it. Nobody could figure out what was wrong.”

Peters was new on campus and enrolled in one of Gitimu’s summer classes when she died. “When we learned that she had bulimia, we came together as a faculty,” Gitimu said. “It was more than just research to us. It was a topic that touched each one of us deeply.”

The research team included Human Ecology associate professors: Gitimu; Taci Turel, Fashion and Interior Merchandising; Rachael Pohle-Krauza, Nutrition; Jeanine Mincher, Dietetics; Zara Rowlands, Dietetics and department chair; and Janice Elias, retired professor and chair. Molly Jameson Cox, a former YSU Psychology professor who is now at the University of Northern Colorado, is also a part of the team.

“We all came to the study with different skills and strengths, and it created a wonderful synergy,” Gitimu said. 

Their study, based on surveys of 550 male and female students, indicates that more than 19 percent of female students on the YSU campus are at risk of an eating disorder. Turel will lead the second phase of the study, researching risk factors for male students. “Male eating disorder patients are not as common, but they are there, and the problem is growing,” she said.

Also on the Human Ecology Department agenda are plans for the annual spring EveryBODY Fashion Show, featuring models of every body type. Faculty and students put the first show together in 2012 to bring attention to eating disorders. It is now funded annually by an endowment created by Danielle Peters’ parents in her memory.

Caption: Human Ecology faculty studying eating disorders in college students include, from left, Associate Professors Jeanine Mincher, Taci Turel and Priscilla Gitimu.