Quality of Life in Adults with Eating Disorders

A dearth of information exists on differences in quality of life across eating disorder diagnoses. The purpose of the current study was to examine quality of life among a large sample of adults with one of six eating disorder diagnoses: anorexia nervosarestricting subtype (AN-R), AN binge/purge subtype (AN-BP), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder (BED), avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), and otherwise specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED). Participants were 1268 adults receiving treatment for an eating disorder across multiple levels of care who completed a measure of quality of life, the WHOQOL-BREF, at admission. Adjusted pairwise comparisons with multiple comparison correction found significant differences among eating disorder groups, even after controlling for age, sex, level of care, body mass index (BMI), and the interaction between BMI and eating disorder diagnosis. Among the five significant findings, four of them involved differences in those with ARFID in comparison to the other eating disorder diagnoses. On the physical health subscale, individuals with BN scored significantly better than did individuals with ARFID. On the psychological subscale, patients with ARFID had significantly better quality of life than those with BN, BED and OSFED. On the social relationships subscale, the BED group scored significantly worse than those with AN-BP. This large study of adults with eating disorders suggests that there are meaningful differences among eating disorder diagnostic groups in quality of life.