Mental health providers may have trouble detecting bulimia in patients, study finds
When presented with a vignette describing the behaviors and characteristics of a patient with disordered eating, only a quarter of mental health providers who participated in a new study were able to correctly diagnose bulimia nervosa.
The findings from researchers at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, part of UF Health, appear in the journal Eating Disorders.
Two common, yet less-recognized, patient factors may have led to the misdiagnoses, said Dakota Leget, a doctoral student in the college’s Ph.D. program in clinical and health psychology, who conducted the study with her mentor, Rebecca Pearl, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology. The providers who participated in the study reviewed vignettes about a fictitious patient who was described as either having healthy weight or obesity and who used excessive exercise to compensate for overeating.
Many patients with bulimia have average or higher body weight, yet misconceptions persist about the “typical” patient with bulimia, Leget said.
“Unfortunately, we have stereotypes that someone with an eating disorder will look ‘very lean’ or ‘sickly,’ but we know that’s not the case for a lot of eating disorders,” she said.