1. The vast majority of patients seeking treatment for an eating disorder do not meet the full DSM criteria.
2. What are the implications for diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders?
3. What are the broader implications for categorical versus dimensional perspectives on the diagnosis of mental illness?
Point 1: EDNOS diagnosis is large Point 2: Symptoms are almost the same, and severity Is no less Point 3: There isn't much attention given to them, and so half the population with eating disorders, in general, are not given appropriate treatment.
Presentation of eating disorder symptoms may not necessarily mean a patient fits the criteria for one of the eating disorders like AN or BN. Patients who fail to meet the criteria still experience a lot of distress and have bad psychosocial outcomes so it is important to treat them. There is also evidence that individuals with EDNOS may not necessarily present with less severe symptoms than AN and BN, particularly with regard to comorbid conditions and mortality (Arcelus, Mitchell, Wales, & Nielsen, 2011; Fairburn & Bohn, 2005), thereby underscoring the need for greater diagnostic and treatment specificity. The same study tells us that a high percentage of the sample from EDNOS present with full threshold symptoms like regular binging or compensatory behaviors etc., which tells us that the EDNOS group is not just made up of people with less severe symptoms, and this also shows us te distress is the same-ish level (Quick, Berg, Bucchianeri, & Byrd-Bredbenner, 2014). Individuals with EDNOS appear to be broadly comparable with individuals with full threshold disorders like AN and BN in terms of symptom severity, symptom persistence, and functional impairment (Grilo et al., 2007; Hay et al., 2010; Thomas, Vartanian, & Brownell, 2009). Furthermore, the information presented in Eating Disorders, The Journal of Treatment & Prevention indicates that EDNOS develops in 4% to 6% of the general population, with 50% to 70% of the individuals who present for treatment of an eating disorder being diagnosed with such. The number of people who are affected by this problem is a lot. EDNOS is not as widely researched as AN and BN because there is less specificity regarding the criteria for it. People diagnosed with EDNOS do not get the same level of attention or treatment from clinicians either, and the treatment approaches for them may not be well-suited or well-researched. EDNOS is often misunderstood as a disorder that is not as severe or as serious as other eating disorders," says Siegfried. "EDNOS interferes significantly with the life goals and activities of individuals with this diagnosis. Recent research indicates that EDNOS is not subthreshold anorexia or subthreshold bulimia but rather associated with specific pathology that may be better classified as separate disorders rather than one 'catch-all' category. Based on current DSM criteria, EDNOS symptoms may include any or some of the followi...