Recent Policies Targeting Marginalized Communities: Intersection with Eating Disorders
Since the beginning of 2025, we’ve seen a wave of public policies targeting marginalized communities. These have reshaped the social landscape in ways that are deeply personal as well as political.
The ACLU has tracked the introduction of 616 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 2025, and at least 24 states have actually passed legislation restricting gender-affirming care, transgender sports participation, bathroom use, and even gender-affirming pronoun use in schools. Legal challenges to bans on conversion therapy risk reintroducing practices that decades of research have shown to be harmful, increasing risks for depression and suicidality. These policies have measurably heightened psychological distress and fear among LGBTQ+ individuals, according to multiple studies.
At the same time, immigration-related policies—such as attempts to deny citizenship to certain U.S.-born children—create instability and uncertainty for many families, disproportionately affecting communities of color.
These policies do more than signal exclusion. They can generate fear, reinforce stigma, and create real barriers to care. They shape daily life: whether someone feels safe seeking healthcare, whether providers feel able to offer evidence-based treatment, and whether individuals experience their identities as valued or stigmatized.
The result is a climate that can exacerbate the very conditions—stress, fear, and marginalization—that contribute to eating disorders.
Eating disorders are frequently misunderstood as issues of vanity or control. But in clinical reality, they are often responses to chaos, uncertainty, and emotional pain. For someone navigating instability—whether that comes from family stress, economic hardship, or systemic discrimination—food and the body can become one of the few domains that feel manageable. Restriction, bingeing, or other disordered behaviors can offer a sense of control, comfort, or consistency when the outside world feels unpredictable or unsafe.
Eating disorders are not only about control; they are also about shame, isolation, and fear. When people are repeatedly told—implicitly or explicitly—that they are less worthy, less safe, or less visible, those messages can become internalized. Thoughts like “I don’t matter” or “I deserve to be excluded” take root. In this context, disordered eating can become a way of coping with profound questions of identity, belonging, and self-worth.
Research reflects these patterns.
LGBTQ+ are at heightened risk for body image distress and disordered eating (Calzo et.al., 2020; Diemer et al 2018; Kamody et al., 2020)
Individuals experiencing food insecurity may be at heightened risk for eating disorders (Hazzard et al., 2020, 2022)
Cis women over age 50 are increasingly seeking treatment for new onset, chronic and recurrent eating disorders (Samuels et al., 2019)
Individuals with multiple marginalized identities are at elevated eating disorder risk (Burke et al, 2020; Panza et al., 2021)
Yet despite these risks, BIPOC, cis men, Transgender, Gender Diverse folks with eating disorders are least likely to receive a diagnosis or appropriate care ( Gorrell et al., 2021; Gorrell & Murray , 2019)
If we are to address eating disorders meaningfully, we must broaden our lens. These are not simply individual pathologies; they are also reflections of social environments. Public policy, healthcare access, and cultural messages all play a role in shaping who becomes vulnerable and who receives care.
At a time like this, it is essential to affirm a simple truth: identities are not disorders, and access to compassionate, evidence-based care should never depend on who you are or where you come from. It is actually our right to have the best healthcare possible and as clinicians, it is our ethical duty to provide it.
REFERENCES
Article: As Anti-Trans Laws Get More Extreme, Here’s Where State Laws Stand in 2025
Report: The Impact of 2025 Anti-Transgender Legislation on Youth
Diemer, E. W., White Hughto, J. M., Gordon, A. R., Guss, C., Austin, S. B., & Reisner, S. L. (2018). Beyond the binary: differences in eating disorder prevalence by gender identity in a transgender sample. Transgender Health, 3(1), 17-23.
Calzo, J. P., Lopez, E. E., Silverstein, S., Brown, T. A., & Blashill, A. J. (2020). Where is the evidence of evidence-based treatment for LGBTQIA+ individuals experiencing eating disorders? In Adapting evidence-based eating disorder treatments for novel populations and settings (pp. 50-73). Routledge.
Kamody, R. C., Grilo, C. M., & Udo, T. (2020). Disparities in DSM‐5 defined eating disorders by sexual orientation among US adults. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 53(2), 278-287.
Gorrell, S., Le Grange, D., Blalock, D. V., Mehler, P. S., Johnson, C., Manwaring, J., ... & Rienecke, R. D. (2021). Gender identity, race/ethnicity and eating pathology in a treatment-seeking community sample. Journal of behavioral and cognitive therapy, 31(1), 77-89.
Gorrell, S., & Murray, S. B. (2019). Eating disorders in males. Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America, 28(4), 641.
Panza, E., Fehling, K. B., Pantalone, D. W., Dodson, S., & Selby, E. A. (2021). Multiply marginalized: Linking minority stress due to sexual orientation, gender, and weight to dysregulated eating among sexual minority women of higher body weight. Psychology of sexual orientation and gender diversity, 8(4), 420.
Burke, N. L., Schaefer, L. M., Hazzard, V. M., & Rodgers, R. F. (2020). Where identities converge: The importance of intersectionality in eating disorders research. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 53(10), 1605-1609.
Samuels, K. L., Maine, M. M., & Tantillo, M. (2019). Disordered eating, eating disorders, and body image in midlife and older women. Current psychiatry reports, 21(8), 70.
Hazzard, V. M., Barry, M. R., Leung, C. W., Sonneville, K. R., Wonderlich, S. A., & Crosby, R. D. (2022). Food insecurity and its associations with bulimic-spectrum eating disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders in a nationally representative sample of US adults. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 57(7), 1483-1490.
Hazzard, V. M., Loth, K. A., Hooper, L., & Becker, C. B. (2020). Food insecurity and eating disorders: A review of emerging evidence. Current psychiatry reports, 22(12), 74.