Incidence of Eating Disorders on the … Decrease?

Reports that eating disorder (ED) rates are rapidly increasing seem nearly ubiquitous, but are rates actually increasing? Are EDs at an “epidemic” level? I came across a recently published study suggesting that this may not be the case; indeed, ED rates might actually be decreasing, at least in the Netherlands.

In the study, Smink and colleagues (2015) followed a group of general practitioners (GPs), servicing roughly 1% of the total population, asking them to record all the newly diagnosed patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) between 1985-1989, 1995-1999, and 2005-2009. They were interested in whether incidence rates changed or remained stable over time.

Incidence refers to the number of new cases of a disease or disorder in a population over a certain time period; it is not the same as prevalence, which refers to the total number of individuals suffering from the condition at a given point in time (or … Continue reading →

Does the Media Cause Eating Disorders? Disordered Eating in Iranian Women: From Tehran to Los Angeles

What is the impact of Western culture on eating disorders? Do images of thin cause eating disorders? I mean, it seems like such a nice and simple hypothesis. It makes intuitive sense: glamorize thin and make thin cool and BAM, everyone wants to be thin. It would be so much easier. Cause? Found. Solution? Easy: ban thin models. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me, since it gives me a lot to blog about) the answer is not that simple.

Just in the last couple of hours, some people who’ve ended up on the SEDs blog have searched:

  • does the media cause eating disorders
  • thin models on tv cause eating disorders to young girls
  • do models influence anorexia
  • ultra thin models causing eating disorders
  • magazine article eating disorders caused by the media
  • and the rare: media doesn’t cause eating disorders

I’m sure most of these search terms lead people to the … Continue reading →

How Common Are Eating Disorders? Incidence, Prevalence and Mortality Rates

Six month of blogging and I have yet to do a proper post on the prevalence of eating disorders. I think it is about time. I see all sorts of numbers thrown around, often depending on the purpose of the article and the author’s bias. Is it 1 in 1000, 1 in 100, 1 in 20 or maybe even 1 in 2? Who is right?

Well, it is a tricky question to answer.

The number depends on how the particular study was conducted. Here are some factors that may influence the final rates: the population being studied, the sample size, the definition of eating disorder, the methods used by researchers to identify and screen for individuals with eating disorders, the number of years over which data is collected, and so on. In other words, a lot! That’s why in order to get a better sense of the true numbers, I … Continue reading →