Binge-eating disorder is the most prevalent eating disorder in the United States, but previous studies have presented conflicting views of the disorder's duration and the likelihood of relapse. A new five-year study led by investigators from McLean Hospital, a member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, showed that 61 percent and 45 percent of individuals still experienced binge-eating disorder 2.5 and 5 years after their initial diagnoses, respectively.
These results contradict previous prospective studies that documented faster remission times, according to the authors. The big takeaway is that binge-eating disorder does improve with time, but for many people it lasts years. As a clinician, oftentimes the clients I work with report many, many years of binge-eating disorder, which felt very discordant with studies that suggested that it was a transient disorder.
It's very important to understand how long binge-eating disorder lasts and how likely people are to relapse so that we can better provide better care." Kristin Javaras, DPhil, PhD, first author, assistant psychologist in the Division of Women's Mental Health at McLean The results were published May 28 in Psychological Medicine, [JR1] published by Cambridge University Press. Binge-eating disorder, which is estimated to impact somewhere between 1 percent and 3 percent of U.
S. adults, is characterized by episodes during which people feel a loss of control over their eating. The average age of onset is 25 years.
