Comparison of the yale-brown-cornell eating disorders scale in recovered eating disorder patients, restrained dieters, and nondieting controls.

Objective: Yale-Brown-Cornell Eating Disorder Scale (YBC-EDS) scores were assessed in recovered eating disorder patients, restrained dieters, and unrestrained nondieters.

Method: YBC-EDS interviews were conducted with 53 recovered eating disorder patients who had no symptoms within at least 6 months, 29 restrained dieters, and 36 unrestrained controls.

Results: Unrestrained control subjects had no typical eating-disordered preoccupations or rituals. The majority (62%) of restrained dieters did have current eating-disordered preoccupations but only 5 had current eating-disordered rituals. Most recovered eating disorder subjects had no current eating-disordered preoccupations (66%) and 76% had no current eating-disordered rituals. Unrestrained eating controls had significantly lower Preoccupation, Total, and Motivation to Change scores on the YBC-EDS than the other groups and significantly lower Ritual scores than the recovered eating disorder group. There were no significant differences between the restrained dieters and the recovered eating disorder group.

Discussion: Recovered eating disorder patients who no longer meet any of the DSM-IV criteria for an eating disorder are similar in severity of eating concern to normal weight restrained eating dieters. Both of these groups have more eating and weight concerns as compared with the unrestrained eating, nondieting controls. The YBC-EDS effectively distinguishes the healthy eating controls from restrained eating dieters and recovered eating disorder patients.