Eating‐disorder symptoms and syndromes in a sample of urban‐dwelling Canadian women: Contributions toward a population health perspective

Objective: We estimated the prevalence of eating disorders and maladaptive eating behaviors in a population‐based sample and examined the association of maladaptive eating with self‐rated physical and mental health. Method: A sample of 1,501 women (mean age = 31.2 years, SD = 6.2) were recruited using random‐digit dialing to participate in a 20‐min telephone interview about eating behaviors. Results: Weighted frequency analysis showed the prevalence of frequent binge‐eating to be 4.1%, that of regular purging to be 1.1%, and that of frequent compensation to be 8.7%. Although we found none of the women to meet full criteria for anorexia nervosa, 0.6% met criteria for bulimia nervosa, 3.8% provisional criteria for binge eating disorder, and 0.6% criteria for a newly proposed entity, purging disorder. As many as 14.9% fell into a residual category representing subthreshold, but potentially problematic variants of eating disturbances. Logistic regression analyses showed that clinical‐level maladaptive eating attitudes and behaviors predicted self‐rated physical‐ and mental‐health problems after sociodemographic factors were controlled. Discussion: This population‐based survey provides prevalence estimates of BN, BED, and purging disorder that are compatible with those of recent epidemiological studies and shows that maladaptive eating attitudes and behaviors represent a substantial population burden. © 2008 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 2009