Examining day hospital treatment outcomes for sexual minority patients with eating disorders.
OBJECTIVE
Epidemiological data support that sexual minorities (SM) report higher levels of eating pathology. Theories suggest these disparities exist due to stressors specific to belonging to a minority group; however, few studies have specifically explored differences between SM and heterosexual individuals in clinical eating disorder samples. Thus, the present study compared SM and heterosexual patients with eating disorders on demographic characteristics and eating disorder and psychological outcomes during day hospital treatment.


METHOD
Patients (N = 389) completed surveys of eating pathology, mood, anxiety, and skills use at treatment admission, 1-month post-admission, discharge, and 6-month follow-up. Overall, 19.8% of patients (n = 79) identified as SM, while 8.0% (n = 32) reported not identifying with any sexual orientation. SM were more likely to present across genders (17.7% of females, 24.2% of males, 33.3% of transgender patients, and 87.5% of nonbinary patients).


RESULTS
SM patients were significantly more likely to endorse major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and self-harm at admission than their heterosexual counterparts. Multilevel models demonstrated that across time, SM patients demonstrated greater eating pathology, emotion dysregulation, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Significant interactions between sexual orientation and time were found for eating pathology and emotion dysregulation, such that although SM patients started treatment with higher scores, they improved at a faster rate compared to heterosexual patients.


DISCUSSION
Consistent with minority stress theory, SM patients report greater overall eating disorder and comorbid symptoms. Importantly, results do not support that there appear to be significant disparities in treatment outcome for SM patients in this sample of day hospital patients.
['Donahue|Joseph M|JM|0000-0002-2843-1457', 'DeBenedetto|Anthony M|AM|', 'Wierenga|Christina E|CE|0000-0002-4843-1809', 'Kaye|Walter H|WH|', 'Brown|Tiffany A|TA|0000-0002-7349-7228']
D000328:Adult D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders D005260:Female D006761:Hospitals D006801:Humans D008297:Male D000072339:Sexual and Gender Minorities D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires D016896:Treatment Outcome D055815:Young Adult
day hospital treatment outcome eating disorders sexual orientation minority stress