About Eating Disorders

It is estimated that over 10 million women and men world wide meet the criteria for an eating disorder. Of this 10 million, 10% will die due to medical complications of their eating disorder which makes the mortality rate for eating disorders the highest of all psychiatric disorders including depression (American Psychiatric Association, 2007). Research suggests that about one percent (1%) of female adolescents have anorexia. That means that about one out of every one hundred young women between ten and twenty are starving themselves, sometimes to death. It is estimated that about four percent (4%), or four out of one hundred, college-aged women have bulimia.

Age
Anorexia and bulimia affect men and women usually between the ages of 13 and 21, but studies report both disorders in children as young as six and individuals as old as seventy-six. There has recently been an increase in women in their thirties developing eating disorders. This may be related to life changes, extended youth, and society pressures.

Eating Disorders & Substance Abuse Disorders
According to Health Magazine, Jan. /Feb. 2002, about 72% of alcoholic women younger than 30 also have eating disorders. It has been our experience that people with eating disorders often abuse prescription and recreational drugs, sometimes to escape emotions and sometimes to help control their weight.

Diagnostics
Eating disorders have been present and recognized throughout history. Eating disorders were included as a separate diagnosis for the first time in the fourth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Included in the DSM-IV are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. Although anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the most thoroughly studied, binge eating disorder is the most common. Variations of these disorders have been addressed in the literature, however are not found in the DSM-IV. They include anorexia athletica, orthorexia nervosa, night eating syndrome, and emotional eating. Body dysmorphic disorder is in a separate clinical category. Commonly referred to in the European literature during the 1960’s and 1970’s, it wasn’t introduced to the United States until it’s appearance in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised