Prevalence of eating disorders in early adolescent students

Abstract

Objective. To measure the prevalence of Eating Behavior Disorders (EBD) in Spanish Early-Adolescent students using standardized methods.

Methods. A two-stage survey of prevalence of EBD in a representative sample of 12 to 13 year old students in 2007 in Zaragoza (Spain). Standard evaluation: We used a twophase cross-sectional design, which involved screening with questionnaires (EAT at a cutoff score of 20) and subsequent semi-structured interviews (SCAN) of screen-positive and screen-negative subjects. We calculated the sociodemographic characteristics, EBD prevalence with their 95% confidence intervals (CI) with Confidence Interval Analysis (C.I.A.) disk version 2.0.0 (Altman et al, 2000). The study was financed by F.I.S. PI 05/2533 (Spain Health Department).

Results. In 2007 we studied 701 male and female, ages 12 to 13, seventh-grade students in 9 public and private schools in Zaragoza (30 classrooms). In the second phase, 164 early adolescents agreed to participate in the clinical evaluation (63 at risk, high scorers; 101 selected sample not at risk). EBD prevalence was 0.7% unspecified eating behavior disorders (UEBD) 50.9 (95% CI: 0.3%-1.7%).

Conclusion. The ICD-10 point prevalence rates of EBD population in Spanish Early-Adolescent students are similar to those reported for other developed countries. The prevalence of subclinical EBD is substantially higher than that of full-syndromes.