"Hidden" eating disorders in Scottish psychiatric inpatients.

The authors designed a study to determine the prevalence of "hidden" eating disorders among a large group of hospitalized psychiatric patients. Of 146 patients surveyed, 13.8% currently had eating disorders diagnosed according to DSM-III criteria: 7.3% had bulimia, 3.6% had anorexia nervosa, and 2.9% had an atypical disorder. Eighty percent of the bulimic patients and all of the patients with an atypical disorder had not been so identified by hospital diagnosis. Eating-disordered patients tended to have concurrent diagnoses of affective or personality disorders.