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Sing Lee, MRCPsych
Department of Psychiatry The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1994;51(3):251-252.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The February 1993 ARCHIVES article by Chen et al¹ is an important step toward a methodologically sound approach to the epidemiological study of psychiatric disorders in the Chinese community of Hong Kong. Only one female with DSM-III diagnosis for anorexia nervosa among 7229 subjects (3786 females and 3443 males; age range, 18 to 64 years) was identified, giving a low lifetime prevalence of 0.03% in females. It confirms the customary belief that anorexia nervosa is a condition "bound" to western cultures and is extremely rare in Chinese people.

However, such a presumptive belief should be tempered until factors relating to patients' presenting mode of distress, help-seeking behavior, investigators' alertness to abnormal eating behavior as psychiatric morbidity, and the diagnostic criteria used are elucidated. Regarding the Chinese, besides recent reports from Taiwan and Hong Kong² on anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, Song and Fang³ described nine females with . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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