Melinda Green, Cornell College – Fighting Eating Disorders in Women

How do we reduce eating disorders in women?

Melinda Green, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell College, discusses how to fight against the ‘thin ideal’ by sharing stories with other women.

Dr. Melinda Green examines biological, psychological, and sociocultural correlates of eating disorders and examines the efficacy of dissonance-based eating disorder prevention and treatment paradigms. She works closely with student researchers to present and publish regularly on this topic. Within the biological realm, Green investigates cardiac risk indices in eating disorder patients. Within the psychological and sociocultural realms, she focuses on objectification and maladaptive social comparison. Green regularly teaches Abnormal Behavioral Neuroscience, Abnormal Psychology, Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine, Research Methods, Psychology of Women and Gender, and Counseling and Psychotherapy at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. She received the 2017 Psychotherapy with Women Award from Division 35 of the American Psychological Association in acknowledgment of the importance of her scientific work. She has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Iowa State University and B.A. in Psychology from the University of Iowa.

Fighting Eating Disorders in Women

Pictures of thin women bombard us on magazine covers and on television.

It can create a “thin ideal”—a perception that the ideal female body is slim and small-waisted. Women find themselves faced with these societal messages that create a psychological struggle, sometimes developing into an eating disorder.

My research team developed an online tool that has proven to reduce eating disorder symptoms among women.  It’s a dissonance-based program, an expanded version of Stice and colleague’s Body Project, which creates a disruption in their thinking, allowing women to think about their bodies in a way that goes against the norm. They learn to combat societal messages and refute societal pressures that define women by their appearances to develop bodily acceptance and positivity.

Through the program, women shared messages to help one another fight the thin ideal, created videos, and learned about changes in the ideal female body type throughout history. We found a large success rate. In fact, a significant percentage of women who took part in the online program showed fewer eating disorder symptoms, lower levels of anxiety, and fewer negative outcomes. As women discussed the hazards of the thin-ideal with other women, they were less likely to pursue unhealthy behaviors.

This research gives us more insight into a cost-effective, highly efficient way to reduce eating disorder symptoms.  An online program can be accessed easily by persons who are struggling and has no costs associated with it.  Widespread accessibility to effective treatment and prevention is critical to reduce eating disorder symptoms and their associated health risks, including cardiac-related death, which is another area we have previously studied. Knowing how to combat the disordered eating symptoms can help fight the high mortality rate associated with disordered eating.

Our team is beginning another clinical trial soon to study ways to make eating disorder prevention and treatment methods more effective.  This time we will be evaluating various face to face programs which can be implemented in treatment settings to improve outcomes.