Insatisfação, checagem corporal e comportamentos de risco para transtornos alimentares em estudantes de cursos da saúde

Abstract

Objectives: To compare body dissatisfaction, body-checking behaviors and risk behaviors for eating disorders among undergraduate students of different courses of health area, and to evaluate the relationship of body-checking behaviors and body dissatisfaction in each course. Methods: A total of 92 undergraduate students aged between 18 and 35 years old from the city of Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil, took part in this study. They filled self-report instrument about sociodemographic data, body dissatisfaction (Body Shape Questionnaire), body-checking behaviors (Body Checking Questionnaire) and risk behaviors for eating disorders (Eating Attitudes Test-26). Descriptive, inferential (Kruskal-Wallis test) and correlational (Spearman’s Rank test) statistics were performed using SPSS 21.0 software and adopting a significance level of 5%. Results: Comparison tests did not show differences in body dissatisfaction (H (4, 92) = 3.534260, p = 0.47), body-checking behavior (H (4, 92) = 3.154817, p = 0.53) or risk behaviors for eating disorders (H (4, 92) = 4.435904, p = 0.35) among the courses analyzed. There was a significant association between body-checking and body dissatisfaction for almost all courses, except for Nutrition (rspearman = 0.01, p > 0.05), with Pharmacy having a strong relationship between those variables (rspearman higher than 0.80). Conclusions: It was concluded that there are no significant differences in body dissatisfaction, body-checking or risk behaviors for eating disorders among health area courses. We emphasize that some variables demonstrate differentiated importance in the construction of the subjects’ body image, such as body-checking behaviors.