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 a ssessed in recovered eating disorder patients, restrained dieters, and unre strained nondieters. Method: YBC-EDS interviews were conducted with 53 reco vered eating disorder patients who had no symptoms within at least 6 months , 29 restrained dieters, and 36 unrestrained controls. Results: Unrestraine d control subjects had no typical eating-disordered preoccupations or ritua ls. The majority (62%) of restrained dieters did have current eating-disord ered preoccupations but only 5 had current eating-disordered rituals. Most recovered eating disorder subjects had no current eating-disordered preoccu pations (66%) and 76% had no current eating-disordered rituals. Unrestraine d eating controls had significantly lower Preoccupation, Total, and Motivat ion to Change scores on the YBC-EDS than the other groups and significantly lower Ritual scores than the recovered earing disorder group. There were n o significant differences between the restrained dieters and the recovered eating disorder group. Discussion: Recovered eating disorder patients who n o 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 disti nguishes the healthy eating controls from restrained eating dieters and rec overed eating disorder patients. (C) 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.