Original articleThe Prevalence and Correlates of Eating Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication
Section snippets
Sample
The NCS-R is a nationally representative survey of the US household population that was administered face-to-face to a sample of 9282 English-speaking adults ages 18 and older between February 2001 and December 2003 (Kessler and Merikangas 2004). The response rate was 70.9%. The sample was based on a multi-stage clustered area probability design. Recruitment featured an advance letter and Study Fact Brochure followed by in-person interviewer visits to obtain informed consent. Consent was verbal
Prevalence
Lifetime prevalence estimates of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, subthreshold binge eating disorder, and any binge eating were .6%, 1.0%, 2.8%, 1.2%, and 4.5% (Table 1). Lifetime prevalence was consistently 1¾ to 3 times as high among women as men for the 3 eating disorders (z = 2.2–2.8, P = .029–.005), 3 times as high among men as women for subthreshold binge eating disorder (z = 3.3, P = .001), and approximately equal among women and men for any binge eating (z =
Discussion
In a population-based survey of American households—the first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States—we found estimates of lifetime prevalence for eating disorders that are broadly consistent with earlier data. However, we found a surprisingly high proportion of men with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (representing approximately one-fourth of cases of each of these disorders). By contrast, clinical and case registry studies (Fairburn and Beglin 1990, Hoek
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