Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of eating disorders amongst women in mid-life: A population-based study of diagnoses and risk factors
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Eating disorders (EDs) are common amongst women; however, no research has specifically investigated the lifetime/12-month prevalence of eating disorders amongst women in mid-life (i.e., fourth and fifth decade of life) and the relevant longitudinal risk factors. We aimed to investigate the lifetime and 12-month prevalence of EDs and lifetime health service use and to identify childhood, parenting, and personality risk factors. METHODS: This is a two-phase prevalence study, nested within an existing longitudinal community-based sample of women in mid-life. A total of 5658 women from the UK Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC; enrolled 20 years earlier) participated. ED diagnoses were obtained using validated structured interviews. Weighted analyses were carried out accounting for the two-phase methodology to obtain prevalence figures and to carry out risk factor regression analyses. RESULTS: By mid-life, 15.3% (95% confidence intervals, 13.5-17.4%) of women had met criteria for a lifetime ED. The 12-month prevalence of EDs was 3.6%. Childhood sexual abuse was prospectively associated with all binge/purge type disorders and an external locus of control was associated with binge-eating disorder. Better maternal care was protective for bulimia nervosa. Childhood life events and interpersonal sensitivity were associated with all EDs. CONCLUSIONS: By mid-life a significant proportion of women will experience an ED, and few women accessed healthcare. Active EDs are common in mid-life, both due to new onset and chronic disorders. Increased awareness of the full spectrum of EDs in this stage of life and adequate service provision is important. This is the first study to investigate childhood and personality risk factors for full threshold and sub-threshold EDs and to identify common predictors for full and sub-threshold EDs. Further research should clarify the role of preventable risk factors on both full and sub-threshold EDs.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Only 27.4% of patients diagnosed with an eating disorder in the United Kingdom have received treatment in their lives.
“According to a previous study of women in the United Kingdom, only 27.4% of patients diagnosed with an eating disorder have been got treatment in their lives (Micali et al., 2017)”
From Feasibility of guided internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy for patients with anorexia nervosa (2022) · cites this paper as Micali et al., 2017
The Results (Prevalence of ED) report that 27.4% of women with eating disorders had either sought help or received treatment at some point in their lives. That figure does not establish that 27.4% received treatment, and it comes from a sample of UK women in mid-life rather than all UK patients with an eating-disorder diagnosis. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 45 · Cited by 245
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- [17]First MB Spitzer RL Gibbon M Williams JBW Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders, Research Version, Non-Patient Edition (SCID-I/NP) 2002 New York, NY Biometrics Research, New York State Psychiatric Institute
- [25]Boyce P Parker G Development of a scale to measure interpersonal sensitivity Aust N Z J Psychiatry 1989 23 3 341 51 2803146
- Authors
- Micali, N., Martini, M. G., Thomas, J. J., Eddy, K. T., Kothari, R., Russell, E., Bulik, C. M., & Treasure, J.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Harvard University (US)
- Cardiff University (GB)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- King's College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Micali, Nadia
- ORCID
- Venue
- BMC Medicine
- Published
- 2017-01-17
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 12-12
- ISSN
- 1741-7015 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5240354
- OpenAlex
- W2574342053
- Cited by
- 245
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 51 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 28.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- BMC Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (acceptedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) (submittedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- UNC Libraries
- Funders
- National Institute of health Research (NIHR) (DHCS/08/08/012)
- Wellchild (n/a)
- Wellcome Trust (092731)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Child Nutrition and Feeding Issues
- Keywords
- eating disorders, middle-aged women, lifetime prevalence, 12-month prevalence, binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, child sexual abuse, locus of control, maternal care, interpersonal sensitivity, health care utilization, risk factors, Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Anorexia Nervosa, Feeding and Eating Disorders, Cognition Disorders, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, United Kingdom, Health Status, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Mental Health, Middle Aged, Regression Analysis, Risk Factors, Prevalence, Age of Onset, Bulimia Nervosa
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
