About Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are serious illnesses that involve extreme emotions, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding food, exercise, and body image. These are treatable mental and physical illnesses that can affect people of every age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic group.

Eating disorders commonly co-occur with other mental health conditions like major depression, anxiety, social phobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Additionally, they may run in families, as there are biological predispositions that make individuals vulnerable to developing an eating disorder.¹

Some statistics:

• 20 million women and 10 million men in the U.S. suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their lives. ¹
• Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. ²
• Over half of teenage girls and one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, vomiting, and taking laxatives. ¹

1. ¹ NEDA Get the Facts on Eating Disorders
2. ² ANAD Eating Disorder Statistics