The Rates of Illness and Death of People with Eating Disorders

Anorexia, an eating disorder in which people deny themselves food, is relatively common. Adolescents and young women, the population most affected by anorexia, have a 0.5 to 1 percent risk of developing the eating disorder, according to two physicians-Sarah Pritts and Jeffrey Susman of the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine. One percent may seem like a small number, but if you consider that 1 in every 100 girls is likely to develop anorexia, the number begins to sound more significant.

Pritts and Susman found that about 4 to 10 percent of those who develop anorexia will die from it. Many of those deaths occur because of organ failure or other health problems caused by insufficient nutrition. The high suicide rate among people with anorexia may help explain why the mortality rate is so high. To put these statistics in perspective, a 1995 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that young women aged 15 to 24 with anorexia are 12 times more likely to die at their age than other young women, and their suicide rate is 75 percent higher.

The longer a person has had the eating disorder, the more likely he or she is to die from it. According to guidelines published in 2000 by the American Psychiatric Association, anyone who has had anorexia for five years has about a 5 percent chance of dying from the disorder. Someone who has had anorexia for 20 year or more has about a 20 percent of dying from it-a dramatic increases that underscores the importance of diagnosing eating disorders as soon as possible.

Researchers at University of British Columbia analyzed 10 million death records posted in the United States from 1986 to 1990. They found a surprisingly high incidence of mortality among older people with anorexia. More than 78 percent of the deaths that involved anorexia nervosa occurred among people who were more than 45 years of age.

Bulimia, an eating disorder characterized by binging and purging, is believed to be more common than anorexia but not as deadly. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 2 to 5 percent of young women will develop bulimia, based on studies done in the early 1990s. There are no long-term studies on the mortality rates connected to bulimia as yet.

ANAD says that the number of American men with bulimia may be equal to the number of women with the eating disorder. Harvard Eating Disorders Clinic reports that men account for 10 to 15 percent of the reported cases of bulimia, based on a 1997 study of men with eating disorders.

Mortality rates decrease significantly among people who receive treatment for their eating disorder. Anorexia Nervosa and Related Disorders, Incorporated (ANRED) estimates that 2 to 3 percent of those who are treated for an eating disorder will die eventually from it, but the mortality rate goes as high as 20 percent for people who have eating disorders but have not received treatment.