Skip to main content

Stigma and Eating Disorders and Body Image: Impact and Solutions

Edited by:
Denise Wilfley, PhD, Scott Rudolph University, United States of America
Sydney Bryn Austin, ScD, Harvard Medical School, United States of America
Hiba Jebeile, PhD, The University of Sydney, Australia
Rebecca Pearl, PhD, University of Florida, United States of America
Laura D’Adamo, Drexel University, United States of America

Submission Status: Closed

This collection is no longer accepting submissions.


Journal of Eating Disorders is calling for submissions to our Collection on Stigma and Eating Disorders and Body Image: Impact and solutions.

  1. During adolescence, there are risks of changes in eating behavior and concerns about weight and body shape. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) may bring benefits to this population.

    Authors: Silvia Patrícia de Oliveira Silva Bacalhau, Luciana Gonçalves de Orange, Marco Aurélio de Valois Correia Junior, Juliana Vieira Nunes, Carolina Larissa Alves Sales de Almeida and Maria Wanderleya de Lavor Coriolano-Marinus
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:77
  2. The prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents has become a significant public health concern worldwide. These conditions not only affect physical health but also contribute to psychol...

    Authors: Abdelaziz Hendy, Sahar M. Soliman, Hyam Tantawi, Samira Salman, Rasha Kadri Ibrahim, Ahmed Hendy, Hadya Abboud Abdel Fattah, Khalid Al-Mugheed, Salwa Sayed, Amany Anwar Saeed Alabdullah, Sally Mohammed Farghaly Abdelaliem and Ahmed Zaher
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:73
  3. Most healthcare providers exhibit weight bias (i.e., negative assumptions, beliefs, or discriminatory acts toward someone based on their weight/body size) in their interactions with patients with obesity. Such...

    Authors: Elizabeth W. Cotter, Ashley Dunford, Kirsten Gilchrist, Tong Yan, Lawrence Deyton and Kofi Essel
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:50
  4. Stigma significantly hinders treatment seeking, adherence to treatment, referrals, and can prolong recovery, while increasing the risk of relapse due to social exclusion and stress. Stigmatizing attitudes towa...

    Authors: Joyce Maas, Mladena Simeunovic-Ostojic, Pia Burger, Nynke Bodde and Theodoor Veerman
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:42
  5. Body image has predominantly been examined among young White women. As a result, the guiding theories in this area of study are based on implicit assumptions that this population’s experience is normative. The...

    Authors: Rachel L. Boutté, Ashley Johnson, Neha J. Goel, Courtney C. Simpson and Suzanne E. Mazzeo
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:38
  6. Bulimia Nervosa (BN) and Binge Eating Disorder (BED) have considerable symptom overlap, and prior studies observed similiarities in respect to patient’s body image. However, weight-based stereotypes have so fa...

    Authors: Adam Schweda, Paolo Meneguzzo, Jasmin Steinbach, Alexander Bäuerle, Maria Alejandra Quiros-Ramirez, Katrin E. Giel, Martin Teufel, Eva-Maria Skoda, Angela Favaro and Simone C. Behrens
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:32
  7. Within mental health research, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the knowledge obtained through lived experiences of illness, treatment, recovery, and health. In recent years, the field...

    Authors: James Downs, Marissa Adams, Anita Federici, Sam L. Sharpe and Agnes Ayton
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:31
  8. The desire to control personal weight status is ever-increasing among adolescents to achieve societal desirability for thinness across developed and developing countries. The purpose of this study was to estim...

    Authors: Geleta Abera, Tihun Feleke, Dansamo Tediso, Seblewongel Megersa, Andualem Zenebe and Abiyu Ayalew Assefa
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:24
  9. Currently, we know little regarding how stigma attributed to eating disorders compares to that of other psychological disorders and additionally within different types of eating disorders. In the current study...

    Authors: Carlye S. Aird, Bennett A. A. Reisinger, Stephanie N. Webb and David H. Gleaves
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:15
  10. Despite being the most prevalent eating disorder, Binge eating disorder (BED) remains largely unrecognized and lacks awareness among the general public, where it is also highly stigmatized. Common stigma surro...

    Authors: Marilou Côté, Marie-Pier Roy, Christopher Rodrigue and Catherine Bégin
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2025 13:5
  11. Eating disorders (EDs) are increasingly prevalent in men, but men remain underrepresented across many ED-specific treatment settings. Based on the idea that persistent stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination...

    Authors: Martin S. Lehe, Georg Halbeisen, Sabine Steins-Loeber and Georgios Paslakis
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:200
  12. Internalized weight stigma (IWS) is highly prevalent and associated with deleterious mental and physical health outcomes. Initiatives are needed to address IWS and promote effective coping and resilience among...

    Authors: Laura D’Adamo, Abigail T. Shonrock, Lawrence Monocello, Jake Goldberg, Lauren H. Yaeger, Rebecca L. Pearl and Denise E. Wilfley
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:197
  13. A significant portion of youth with anorexia nervosa (AN) or atypical anorexia nervosa (AAN) have history of ‘overweight/obesity’ (i.e., body mass index ≥ 85th percentile for age-and-sex) prior to the onset of...

    Authors: Grace B. Jhe, Michelle Recto, Julia A. Vitagliano, Kelsey L. Rose, Tracy Richmond, Melissa Freizinger and Jessica Lin
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:192
  14. Children with obesity may experience weight-based discrimination as a result of weight bias and stigma, which can have deleterious effects on their health and wellbeing, including increased risk of dysregulate...

    Authors: Kathryn E. Kyler, Codi Cutburth, Gayla Goleman, Sarah E. Hampl and Amy R. Beck
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:170
  15. This systematic review examines the literature regarding perceived clinician stigma and treatment experiences of adult patients with eating disorders, emphasising lived experience perspectives.

    Authors: Gabriel Lubieniecki, Anne Nileshni Fernando, Alisha Randhawa, Sean Cowlishaw and Gemma Sharp
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:161
  16. Although many people have concerns about their body image, weight, and eating behaviors these issues are not usually discussed in a productive manner with medical providers. Thus, we examined nursing and medic...

    Authors: Charlotte H. Markey, Kristin J. August, Diane L. Rosenbaum, Meghan M. Gillen, Dua Malik and Simran Pillarisetty
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:159
  17. Evidence on how persons with and in remission from an eating disorder experience their oral health is limited. Dental treatment in Sweden today is often postponed until medical rehabilitation has been complete...

    Authors: Ulrica Gidlund, Tove Hasselblad, Pernilla Larsson-Gran, Yvonne von Hausswolff-Juhlin and Göran Dahllöf
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:158
  18. Weight stigma among healthcare professionals is associated with negative health impacts on patients, yet there are few effective strategies to combat weight stigma among health professional learners. The Body ...

    Authors: Anna Kreynin, Tessa Meurer, Lauren Pictor, Agatha A. Laboe, Mahathi Gavuji, Sabrina Fleege, Erin Bowden and Katherine Schaumberg
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:156
  19. Perceived weight stigma (PWS) and internalized weight stigma (IWS) are both associated with psychological distress and food addiction (FA). Using the previously proposed ‘cyclic obesity/weight-based stigma’ (C...

    Authors: Po-Ching Huang, Janet D. Latner, Nadia Bevan, Mark D. Griffiths, Jung-Sheng Chen, Chi Hsien Huang, Kerry S. O’Brien and Chung-Ying Lin
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:150
  20. Weight stigma refers to the social rejection, discrimination, and ideological devaluation of individuals because of body size and is a direct result of weight bias and anti-fat attitudes. Individuals with high...

    Authors: Rachel D. Barnes and Jessica L. Lawson
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:128
  21. Stigma is a complex construct and its association with help-seeking among those experiencing eating disorders is not well understood. Rates of help-seeking are low for those with eating disorder symptoms and, ...

    Authors: Prudence L. Wall, Daniel B. Fassnacht, Esme Fabry, Anne E. O’Shea, Catherine Houlihan, Kate Mulgrew and Kathina Ali
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:126
  22. Since the first papers focused on internalized weight stigma were published in the mid 2000’s, the literature has grown into a robust field that complements existing knowledge on weight stigma. Recently, resea...

    Authors: Sarah Nutter, Jessica F. Saunders and Rachel Waugh
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 12:98
  23. Weight based stigma might drive the development of both higher weight and binge eating disorder (BED). To improve treatment and outcomes, a deeper understanding of how stigma and shame are correlated in clinic...

    Authors: Kjersti Hognes Berg, Eli Natvik and Trine Tetlie Eik-Nes
    Citation: Journal of Eating Disorders 2023 11:228

About the Collection

We have launched this article Collection in response to the recognized harms of structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels of stigma and need for more ideas and evidence in this important area. 

We encourage papers that enhance understanding of stigma in relation to eating disorders, weight, or body image, with strong interest in studies that include diverse samples, examine intersecting forms of stigma, or analyze stigma at multiple levels. We also invite papers that contribute new knowledge of how stigma affects health and well-being, and that move toward developing and implementing innovative interventions to prevent and reduce stigma for people with eating disorders and body image concerns.

Further invited areas include: intervention comparisons of single-level versus multi-level stigma-reducing interventions, identification of mechanisms of change of effective stigma reduction interventions, psychometric studies identifying reliable and valid measures of outcomes and change processes of stigma reduction programs, delineation of theoretical frameworks for topic-specific and/or general approaches to understand and reduce stigma, and implementation studies of evidence-based stigma reduction interventions.

Submission Guidelines

Back to top

This Collection welcomes submission of all types of articles. 

Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Stigma and Eating Disorders and Body Image: Impact and solutions" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer-review process. The peer-review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.