ABSTRACT
Until the 1960s and 70s, few people had heard of anorexia nervosa, but it soon began to be reported with increasing frequency in Western societies. Young females from middle-and upper-class families were voluntarily starving themselves and losing weight to the point of emaciation and sometimes death. A decade later, a new eating disorder was recognized; in bulimia nervosa, young women alternate between restricting and eating large amounts of food, often followed by purging. Although these eating disorders have flourished recently in Westernized societies during periods of relative affluence and enhanced social opportunities for women (Bemporad, 1996, 1997), voluntary self-starvation and periods of binge eating and purging have been reported throughout history. Eating disorders that would be recognizable today as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have existed since ancient times (Bemporad, 1997). Binge eating disorder and residual-and mixed-symptom eating disorders (i.e., other specified feeding and eating disorder [OSFED] and unspecified feeding and eating disorder [USFED], previously known as eating disorder not otherwise specified)1 were first included in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994), and remain in the manual’s current fifth edition (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
