[2] OSFED includes five examples: The five OSFED examples that can be considered eating disorders include atypical AN, BN (of low frequency and/or limited duration), BED (of low frequency and/or limited duration), purging disorder, and NES.
Of note, OSFED is not limited to these five examples, and can include individuals with heterogeneous eating disorder presentations (i.e., OSFED-other).
[5] For OSFED, a particular cognitive behavioral treatment can be used called CBT-Enhanced (CBT-E), which was designed to treat all forms of eating disorders.
The largest community study is by Stice (2013),[7] who examined 496 adolescent females who completed annual diagnostic interviews over 8 years.
For example, in a population of 215 young patients presenting for ED treatment, the diagnosis of EDNOS to OSFED decreased from 62.3% to 32.6%.
[10] Although the prevalence appears to reduce when using the categorizations of EDNOS vs. OSFED, a high proportion of cases still receive diagnoses of atypical eating disorders, which creates difficulties in communication, treatment planning, and basic research.