Eating disorder (ED) are an important mental health problem because of theirs overall prevalence, especially in children and adolescents. Low self-esteem is considered, along with others, one of the risk factors for the development of these disorders, without having clarified the real impact of low self-esteem on the development of ED. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between self-esteem and the risk of developing an eating disorder.

Material and method We have selected a sample of 500 patients who were in the 2nd year of secondary school to which has been applied a battery of scales including the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, and the EAT-26 scale for ED. We used logistic regression using SPSS to analyze the relationship between both variables.

In addition to analyzing clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of the sample, we have found that for every decrease of 1 point in Rosenberg scale, there is an increase of 9 % in the probability of being a case of ED for the EAT-26 scale (P < 0.05).

Regarding these results, we can conclude that, in our sample, having low self-esteem score, significantly increases the likelihood of having a high score on the scale of ED. This data can be useful in establishing a preventive strategy and an adequate treatment.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.