A Meta-Analysis of Mortality in Eating Disorders

You often hear that anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness, but you might struggle to find the rates for bulimia nervosa or EDNOS. Even for AN, the most common cause of death is rarely reported and the reported rates often vary a lot (depending on the study (and the media outlet).

I wanted to find out what are: (1) the mortality rates in BN and EDNOS and (2) the common causes of death in these disorders.  A relatively recent meta-analysis (click here for some background, pros and cons of meta-analyses) of 36 studies, which addressed some of my questions, was published by Arcelus and colleagues.

They excluded studies that had less than 15 patients and/or <1-year follow-up.

SO, WHAT DID THEY FIND?

Mortality in Anorexia Nervosa:

  • 35 studies, mean follow-up time: 12.8 years (maximum 36.2), mean sample size was 361 (maximum 6009).
  • Total
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