Boys are different: a mindful exploration on latent profiles of body image and disordered eating attitudes in adolescent males

Adolescence is a challenging period of development marked by many physiological, social, and cognitive changes that all seem to revolve around an evolving sense of identity and self image. Eating disorders and sub-threshold disordered eating are prevalent in adolescence, and once established, incredibly challenging to treat clinically. There is a significant difference in the amount of evidence exploring disordered eating by gender, with males being poorly understood. Research exploring the construction of body image and the link to disordered eating developing differently for males remains scarce, further substantiating the need for research to bridge the gap between gender differences and body image dissatisfaction. A latent profile analysis was conducted to examine body image and disordered eating attitudes in a cross- sectional sample of males (N=151; 51.7% Caucasian), 11 to 18 years old (M=14.58, SD-2.08), from a rural community in the western United States. Participants completed the Multidimensional Body- Self Relations Questionnaire-Appearance Scale (MSBRQ-AS), the Eating Attitudes Test (Eat-18), and the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM). All are self- report measures with strong psychometric properties.