Additional Statistics

According to the Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention Organization, at least 50,000 individuals will die directly as a result of this disorder prevalence in Non-Western Countries. Buhrich reported that 0.05% of the psychiatric patient samples in Malaysia were diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, and this prevalence rate had not increased for 15 years. Lee reported in 1989 that anorexia sufferers were very few in Hong Kong compared with Western countries. In Japan , Kuboki conducted a survey among the general and female patient population of 732 hospitals in 1988. He found that the female patient population had about 1.5 times more anorexia sufferers than the general population, although the prevalence rate was still only 0.0063%. Kuboki repeated the same survey in 1992. The prevalence of anorexia nervosa was now higher than the previous data. Among the general population, the rate had increased from 0.0036% to 0.0045%. Among the female patient population, the rate had increased from 0.0063% to 0.0097%; the proportion of anorexia nervosa sufferers among the female patient population was now twice that in the general population. Nakamura's survey suggested that the rate of anorexia sufferers was 0.0048% among 130 hospitals and 1326 clinics in Japan . This figure is similar to the result derived from Kuboki's survey. Results from a questionnaire-based survey recently conducted in Iran indicate that the prevalence of anorexia nervosa is 0.9% among schoolgirls. This figure was not obtained by clinical diagnosis, however; and this is the highest rate reported among non-Western countries. Lee reported that 0.46 % of female college students had bulimia nervosa in Hong Kong in 1991, a lower rate than that found by Kiriike (2.9%) in Japan . Lee also reported that almost all the female students wanted to be slimmer, although they did not try to lose weight. Apart from Asian countries, there are some reports in Islamic countries of bulimia nervosa. Nasser in Cairo reported that the estimated prevalence of bulimia nervosa found by administering questionnaires on disordered eating was 1.2% among the schoolgirls; using the same type of survey as the one used in Cairo, investigators estimated that 3.2% of Iranian school girls suffer from bulimia nervosa. Again, one should note that these figures were not obtained by clinical diagnosis and that the Iranian rate is the highest among non-Western countries. Population-based and patient-based estimates of anorexia nervosa in non–Western countries thus ranged from 0.002% to 0.9% and that of bulimia nervosa ranged from 0.46% to 3.2%.

There were no population-based prevalence surveys in other non-Western countries. In Singapore in 1982, Ong and colleagues published a case report on 7 Chinese females with anorexia nervosa. Ong suggested that there was a low incidence of this disorder in Singapore . Following Ong's report, Ung reported in 1997 that 50 anorexia nervosa sufferers were identified, and he suggested there was an increase in the incidence of this disorder.