| A variety of research has indicated that positive personal outlook, coping, social support, and religiosity may reduce or prevent dieting, anxiety, depression, and bulimia. However, no study has evaluated whether there is an additional benefit of religious coping beyond that of secular coping for women at risk for disordered eating. This study evaluated the relationships among religious and secular measures of personal outlook, social support, and coping with disordered eating symptoms and negative emotions in a sample of 110 female college students over one month. Although religious measures did not explain additional variance in dieting or bulimic symptoms above and beyond the variance explained by secular measures, results did show that religious measures explained additional variance in anxiety and depressive symptoms which are often precursors to eating disorder behaviors. |
