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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

Not an expert, but I don’t think - and cursory googling seems to agree - there are any “social contagions” in the dsm. The concept is not exactly proven science, and it’s worth mentioning that it’s also a bit of a dogwhistle term used to undermine a lot of queer and gender identities.

Fwiw I think it’s patently obvious behaviors can influence people, but in my mind they influence the avenue of expression - they don’t create disorders from scratch. So like e.g. body image would be the underlying disorder, and if it expresses as bulimia or anorexia or cutting could be somewhat “socially contagious”.

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They are correct in terms of eating disorders, bulimia is socially contagious.

But what does that mean? Like if you spend time around someone with bulimia there’s a chance you’ll get it too? That doesn’t seem right to me.

What does seem right to me is if you feel fucked up about your body and your attractiveness, how you express that can be influenced by what you see other people doing. But if you feel confident about yourself there is no amount of hanging out with people with eating disorders that will give you one…

Read up, there's plenty of literature, there's no need for something to make sense before you actually read up on it.

You seem confident of your statement that bulimia is socially contagious. I am asking you to clarify what that means to you specifically.

If you’d like to link a paper that has informed your understanding, i’d be happy to read it. But telling me to “read up on it” is a weird dodge of a direct question. Have you read up on it?

I have read a little, not a lot - but what i have read makes a case for some influence of social groups but doesn’t make a case for eating disorders being contagious like viruses.

I mean when I was a kid nobody did it, when I was in highschool all the classes had at least 3 girls doing it and nowadays nobody does it anymore at those rates (I have 2 friends who now teach at the highschool we went to). Thats what it means to me. And there's plenty of papers documenting this rise and fall which happened to line up with my generation. Regarding papers I read some when this topic came up in a podcast and was convinced and there were a lot of results for a query like "social contagion bulimia papers".

Just looking at this specific paper, it suggests that eating disorders are part of a general emotional dysfunction spectrum. In practice, we're probably not talking about confident people.

From my anecdotal experience with people I've known, it makes sense that the other symptoms in that spectrum, like bloating and anxiety, could make someone more receptive to unrealistic body standards and "solutions" to achieve those standards and regain control. That's what it's really about: not feeling in control.

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