Eating disorders among physically disabled national athletes in Malaysia

Eating disorders are becoming a cause of concern amongst athletes in recent times. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of eating disorders amongst physically disabled athletes in Malaysia. Athletes were sampled and screened for eating disorders utilising the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire 6.0 (EDE-Q-for females) and the Eating Disorder Assessment in Males (EDAM-for males).

Athletes were approached individually, and they responded via an online questionnaire. A total of 271 athletes responded (sample needed 269) from the total of 700 athletes (38.7%).

From the total, 14.4% (n = 39, 95% CI = 10.56-19.28) of the athletes had eating disorders (14.4% of the male athletes and 14.5% of female athletes). The final model of a binary logistic regression was conducted and found that the higher the body weight (AOR: 1.02, 95% CI: 1.00-1.04, p = 0.03), the higher the income (AOR: 0.992, 95% CI: 0.990- 0.994, p = 0.02), the more athlete suffered from coaches intimidating behaviours(AOR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.03-1.33, p = 0.02), a perception of having stress (AOR: 7.61, 95% CI: 1.69-34.39, p = 0.01) and having stress (AOR: 3.70, 95% CI: 1.02-9.68, p = 0.04) were common factors seen in athletes with eating disorders.

About two in every 10 disabled athletes suffered from eating disorders.