New Rhode Island Hospital study shows inadequate diagnostic criteria for eating...( Providence RI A new study by Rhode ...),Health

Providence, RI A new study by Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University suggests that the DSM-IV criteria for eating disorders have limited clinical utility. Researchers recommend a broadening of the criteria for bulimia, anorexia and binge eating disorder.

In the DSM-IV manual, bulimia and anorexia nervosa are the only officially recognized and formally defined eating disorders. A third, binge eating disorder, is listed in the Appendix as a disorder requiring further study for possible inclusion in the next edition.

Researchers noted that in treatment center programs for eating disorders more than half of the patients are diagnosed with an eating disorder not otherwise specified (NOS). The researchers anticipated that in a general psychiatric setting, patients conditions would be less severe than in a specialized center.

The Rhode Island Hospital study looked at 330 patients who were diagnosed with a lifetime history of an eating disorder. Of those, 307 received 1 diagnosis and 23 were diagnosed with 2 disorders. The majority of the patients (85 percent) were female with a mean age of 34.3 years. Of the 330 patients, almost half (164) had a current eating disorder, 60 had an eating disorder in partial remission and slightly more than one-third (129) had a past diagnosis.

Lead author Mark Zimmerman, M.D., director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, said, The NOS category of the DSM-IV was intended to be a residual category of diagnosis to provide a diagnostic option for relatively infrequent cases. This study has shown that eating disorder NOS cases predominate and suggests a problem with the DSM-IV nomenclature for this class of disorders. Zimmerman also noted, Our study and its results are consistent with other studies suggesting that the criteria for anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorde
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