Males make up about a third of the population struggling with eating disorders in the United States. While these conditions often start during the teen years, by some estimates, as many as 14% of American men experience an eating disorder by age 40, and they may be more likely to die from it than women. Yet, recognition of this mental illness is not where it should be according to male eating disorder expert Jason Nagata.
This is especially true for muscle dysmorphia, he says, a disorder that overwhelmingly affects males and is characterized by a hyperfixation on building muscles. It is categorized under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders in the diagnostic manual for psychiatric illnesses, known as the DSM, though it frequently also involves extreme dieting.
For Nagata, an associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and an eating disorders hospitalist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, one major solution is reclassifying muscle dysmorphia as an eating disorder in the upcoming sixth edition of the DSM. He believes this change would make doctors more likely to properly identify patients who need support and refer them to specialists, and improve insurance coverage.
