What is an unspecified eating disorder?

Hearing this diagnosis may cause confusion for some people. Here we explain what this disorder is about and what signs it presents.

This may sound strange, but what does it mean for a disorder to be unspecified? Today we are going to tell you a little more about this category of eating disorders (ED), so that you know what health professionals are referring to when they mention it and why it can be so commonly used when diagnosing.

This diagnostic category was proposed by the American Psychiatric Association and included in the DSM-V in order to encompass all those people who, despite not meeting all the diagnostic criteria for a case of bulimia or anorexia, do have significant effects on their diet and consequences on their physical, emotional and social health.

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These are some of the disorders that can be included in this category according to the DSM:

  1. atypical: In this case, all the criteria for anorexia nervosa are met, but even though the person has had a significant weight loss is still within the ranges established as normal or desired according to height characteristics.
  2. (low frequency and/or limited duration): This occurs when the person meets all the criteria for bulimia nervosa, except that the Binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviors occur at different time periods than those established by the criteria for bulimia.
  3. (low frequency and/or limited duration): In a similar way to the previous one, in this case all the criteria for binge eating disorder are met, except for the time criterion, since binge eating occurs less frequently or occurs in a period of less than three months.
  4. purging disorder: Unlike bulimia, in this disorder, the person carries out compensatory purging behaviors without first having had the binge eating behavior.
  5. Nocturnal eating syndrome: This disorder is characterized by the presence of recurrent episodes in which the person recurrently wakes up at night and eats some type of food or when there is excessive food consumption after dinner. In both cases the person is completely aware of these behaviors; Furthermore, these are not better explained by changes in the person’s sleep cycles or social norms.
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Do you want to know if you have an eating disorder? Find out.

So now you know, if you ever hear the diagnosis of unspecified eating disorder, you should not dismiss it or, on the contrary, think that it is something very strange. Surely The person has a significant difficulty in their relationship with food that must be addressed, but this does not make them strange or different. You need support and validation to recover from this condition.

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