What is Purging Disorder?
Purging disorder is a type of eating disorder that hasn’t yet been officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, the medical group that classifies eating disorders and defines the criteria by which they are diagnosed. A study published in the September 2007 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry describes purging disorder as a variation of bulimia but draws distinctions between the two. Bulimia involves binge eating followed by vomiting, fasting, taking laxatives, or exercising excessively to eliminate the food and control weight. With purging disorder, there’s no binge: patients purge even when they eat normal amounts of food.
