title: Empirical classification of eating disorders.
abstract: Current diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) account for a minority of individuals with clinically significant disorders of eating, raising concerns about the clinical utility of current definitions. This review examines evidence for the validity of current and alternative approaches to defining eating disorders and implications for draft criteria for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Although this review largely supports the predictive validity of distinctions among AN, BN, and the newly proposed binge eating disorder (BED), it also highlights that our tendency to "study what we define" has created a gap between the problems that people have and what we know about those problems. Future research on the causes and consequences of eating disorders should include more heterogeneous groups to enable identification of meaningful boundaries that distinguish between disorders based on etiological and predictive validity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA. keel@psy.fsu.edu
authors.forename: Pamela K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Keel
authors.forename: Tiffany A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Lauren A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Holland
authors.forename: Lindsay P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Bodell
mesh_terms: D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis; D056912:Binge-Eating Disorder / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis; D002032:Bulimia / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results