With that being said, diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by elevated blood sugar (American Diabetes Association, 2015) . Approximately 1.25 million children and adults have been diagnosed with a type of diabetes and it is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States . The prevalence of this disease is approximately 93 cases per 1000 (American Diabetes Association, 2015). What is the possible relationship between eating disorders, a psychological disorder and diabetes, a metabolic disease? Through various epidemiological studies, researchers have determined diabetes as a risk factor for negative body perception among adolescents and adults, which can result in eating disorders from all three categories as defined by the DSM-V. A cross-sectional study, case control, cohort and randomized clinical trial studies will be examined The four studies chosen for this critique are appropriate because they provide audiences with a possible explanation for how and why diabetes is possibly associated with disordered eating …show more content…
The cross-sectional study examined proved that eating disorders were more present in diabetic patients, however, it cannot be concluded by this one study that eating disorders are indeed caused by diabetes. Goncalves et al employed at small study population of only 79 individuals, which makes it unclear if those in the study are supposed to representative of a larger population (Goncalves et al, 2015). This does not allow for generalizations. One strength of the cross-sectional study examined is that multiple screening tools to assess the presence of absence of disordered eating was used. The use of multiple tools can guarantee validity of the exposure assessments (Goncalves et al, 2015). Given these limitations, the findings of this study may be due to the process of selecting the subjects for the