Archival ReportThe Prevalence and Correlates of Binge Eating Disorder in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys
Section snippets
Samples
Data come from the World Health Organization World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative (7). The 14 countries in WMH that assessed BED include 1 with a World Bank (8) classification as lower-middle income (Colombia), 3 with a classification as upper-middle income (Brazil, Mexico, Romania), and 10 with a classification as high income (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and the United States). All surveys used adult household
Prevalence
Lifetime prevalence estimates average 1.0% for BN and 1.9% for BED across surveys. Range and interquartile range (IQR) (25th–75th percentiles) of lifetime prevalence estimates across surveys are .0% to 2.0% (.4% to 1.0%) for BN and .2% to 4.7% (.8% to 1.9%) for BED (Table 1). Twelve-month prevalence estimates (IQR) average .4% (.1% to .3%) for BN and .8% (.2% to 1.0%) for BED. Both lifetime and 12-month prevalence estimates are higher for BED than BN in virtually all countries.
Age of Onset and Persistence
Both mean and
Discussion
Results must be interpreted in the context of several study limitations. Response rates varied considerably across surveys. Sample sizes were too small to produce country-specific results other than for estimates of prevalence, AOO, and persistence. Because of confounding between country and sociodemographic variables, it was impossible to explore potentially important relationships of eating disorders with race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status 2, 33, except aggregate associations with
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