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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 Page  | 14