NEDA TOOLKIT for Parents
Eating Disorder Statistics
How many people will struggle with an eating disorder during their lifetime?
It sounds like an obvious, easy-to-answer question, but it’s more complicated than you might think. Since the
vast majority of people with eating disorders either never seek formal treatment for their disorder or are never
formally diagnosed (Hart et al., 2011), researchers can’t just search medical records. Still, scientists in the US
and around the world are trying to gather data to give sufferers, loved ones, and the general community more
information about how many people have eating disorders.
Researchers calculate the frequency of eating disorders using two main measurements:
• Incidence – the number of people who first develop an eating disorder during a specific period of time
(usually one year)
• Prevalence – the total number of people who have an eating disorder during a specific period of time
Population-Wide Statistics
NEDA has gathered data on the prevalence of eating
disorders from the US, UK, and Europe to get a
better idea of exactly how common eating disorders
are. Older data from other countries that use more
strict definitions of anorexia and bulimia give lower
prevalence estimates:
• In a study of 31,406 Swedish twins born from
1935-1958, 1.2% of the women had strictly
defined anorexia nervosa during their lifetime,
which increased to 2.4% when a looser
definition of anorexia was used (Bulik et al.,
2006). • For twins born between 1975 and 1979 in
Finland, 2.2-4.2% of women (Keski-Rahkonen
et al., 2007) and 0.24% of men (Raevuori et al.,
2009) had experienced anorexia during their
lifetime. • At any given point in time between 0.3-0.4%
of young women and 0.1% of young men will
suffer from anorexia nervosa, 1.0% of young
women and 0.1% of young men will suffer from
bulimia, with similar rates for binge eating
disorder (Hoek & van Hoeken, 2003).
Several more recent studies in the US have used
broader definitions of eating disorders that more
accurately reflect the range of disorders that occur,
resulting in a higher prevalence of eating disorders.
• A 2007 study asked 9,282 English-speaking
Americans about a variety of mental health
conditions, including eating disorders. The
results, published in Biological Psychiatry,
found that:
0.9% of women and 0.3% of men had
anorexia during their life
1.5% of women and 0.5% of men had
bulimia during their life
3.5% of women and 2.0% of men had
binge eating disorder during their life
(Hudson et al., 2007).
• When researchers followed a group of 496
adolescent girls for 8 years (Stice et al., 2010),
until they were 20, they found:
5.2% of the girls met criteria for DSM-
5 anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating
disorder. When the researchers included nonspe-
cific eating disorder symptoms, a total
of 13.2% of the girls had suffered from a
DSM-5 eating disorder by age 20.
• Combining information from several sources, Eric
Stice and Cara Bohon (2012) found that
Between 0.9% and 2.0% of females
and 0.1% to 0.3% of males will develop
anorexia Subthreshold anorexia occurs in 1.1% to
3.0% of adolescent females
Between 1.1% and 4.6% of females
and 0.1% to 0.5% of males will develop
bulimia Subthreshold bulimia occurs in 2.0% to
5.4% of adolescent females
Between 0.2% and 3.5% of females and
0.9% and 2.0% of males will develop
binge eating disorder
Subthreshold binge eating disorder
occurs in 1.6% of adolescent females
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