Reflection

Male Eating Disorders: UK Statistics

Reliable figures on eating disorders in men are scarce, scattered and often misquoted. This page gathers the numbers I trust enough to use in my own clinical work, each with its source. It is updated as new data is published, and where a widely repeated figure rests on weak evidence, I say so.

How many men are affected

Around 1 in 4 people with an eating disorder is male, the estimate used by the UK eating disorder charity Beat, based on Sweeting and colleagues’ 2015 review. Beat itself cautions the true number “might be much higher” because men are under-represented in the research (Beat; Sweeting et al., 2015).

Newer NHS data points the same way. In the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2023/4, 6.1% of men in England screened positive for a possible eating disorder, against 11.8% of women: on that measure, men are roughly a third of adults showing features of a possible eating disorder (NHS England, 2025).

The same survey shows the male figure has nearly doubled in 16 years, from 3.5% in 2007 to 6.1% in 2023/4.

Hospital admissions

Analysis of NHS data by the Royal College of Psychiatrists found hospital admissions for eating disorders rose 84% in five years to 24,268 in 2020/21, and admissions of boys and young men rose 128%, from 280 in 2015/16 to 637 in 2020/21 (RCPsych, 2022).

Which conditions affect men most

Binge eating disorder is the most gender-balanced eating disorder: lifetime prevalence of 2.0% in men versus 3.5% in women in the standard international study, making men roughly 40% of cases (Hudson et al., Biological Psychiatry, 2007). Anorexia and bulimia show ratios closer to 1 in 4.

ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder) is also markedly more balanced: studies report 21% to 50% of child and adolescent cases are male (Sanchez-Cerezo et al., European Eating Disorders Review, 2023).

Muscle dysmorphia (“bigorexia”) lacks a single robust prevalence figure. A BDD Foundation expert has estimated up to 1 in 10 gym-training men may be affected, but this is an expert estimate reported in the press, not a study finding (BBC, 2015). Peer-reviewed work reports wide ranges, reaching over half of competitive bodybuilders on some measures (Mitchell et al., Sports Medicine, 2017). The often-repeated claim that “2% of the general population” has muscle dysmorphia has no solid primary source, and I do not use it.

The help-seeking gap

Men wait longer, are diagnosed later, and are diagnosed less. UK interview research found men often did not recognise they could be ill at all, because eating disorders are culturally framed as female illnesses, and that “the route to diagnosis could be complex and lengthy, even when men presented late in their illness” (Räisänen & Hunt, BMJ Open, 2014).

Across all sufferers, Beat found an average of three and a half years between symptoms emerging and treatment starting (Beat, 2017). A large US college study found men had among the lowest odds of ever receiving a diagnosis or treatment when symptomatic (Sonneville & Lipson, IJED, 2018).

During the pandemic, recorded eating disorder incidence rose 42% above expected in girls aged 13 to 16 but stayed flat in boys (Trafford et al., The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2023). In my clinical reading, that flat line reflects under-presentation, not absence of illness.

Mortality: the hardest numbers

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder (Beat). The meta-analysis behind that claim found death rates 5.86 times expected in anorexia, with 1 in 5 of those deaths by suicide (Arcelus et al., Archives of General Psychiatry, 2011).

For men specifically the picture is worse: a population cohort of 19,041 patients found men died at over seven times the expected rate (SMR 7.24) against 4.59 for women (Iwajomo et al., British Journal of Psychiatry, 2021). Late presentation is one plausible reason.

Athletes

Among elite athletes, 8% of men had clinical or subclinical eating disorders against 0.5% of male non-athletes, in the Norwegian national study that remains the reference (Sundgot-Borgen & Torstveit, 2004).

Current NHS pressure

Children and young people starting NHS eating disorder treatment rose from 8,034 in 2019/20 to 11,174 in 2024/25, up almost 40% (NHS England, January 2026).

Addiction and eating disorders: the overlap

The two conditions I have spent my career treating are deeply intertwined, and the numbers bear this out.

The most quoted figures come from Columbia University’s CASA report: up to half of people with eating disorders abuse alcohol or drugs, against about 9% of the general population, and up to 35% of substance abusers have an eating disorder (CASA, 2003). Those are ceilings from an advocacy report, so treat them as the upper bound. The rigorous pooled estimates are lower but still striking: 21.9% lifetime substance use disorder among eating disorder patients (Bahji et al., Psychiatry Research, 2019), and in the reverse direction, 27.3% lifetime eating disorders among people in drug treatment (Nokleby, 2012).

The overlap concentrates in binge and purge presentations: binge-purge anorexia patients were 3.6 times more likely to use alcohol than restricting patients (Fouladi et al., European Eating Disorders Review, 2015), and one in five people who binge eat has a lifetime alcohol use disorder (Bogusz et al., Addiction, 2021).

The combination is what kills. In a Danish nationwide cohort of 20,759 eating disorder patients, mortality was 2.85 times expected without substance problems, 11.84 times expected with comorbid alcohol use disorder, and 22.99 times with alcohol, cannabis and hard drugs combined (Mellentin et al., American Journal of Psychiatry, 2022). In the classic longitudinal study, alcohol problems predicted death in anorexia, and a third of the women who died with alcoholism had no alcohol problem when first assessed: it developed during the illness (Keel et al., Archives of General Psychiatry, 2003).

One shared root is worth naming: 45 to 67% of alcohol-dependent individuals are alexithymic, unable to identify and describe what they feel (Thorberg et al., Addictive Behaviors, 2009). In my practice, the substance and the eating behaviour are so often the same attempt to manage a feeling that has no name. This is why I treat addiction and eating disorders as neighbouring territories rather than separate conditions, and why screening for one when the other presents is basic clinical care. These comorbidity figures are international (US, Nordic, global meta-analyses); no UK-specific prevalence study exists yet.

About these figures

Compiled and clinically reviewed by Dr Philippe Jacquet, a psychotherapist specialising in male eating disorders for over 25 years. Non-UK studies are labelled; estimates are called estimates; figures I consider unreliable are flagged rather than repeated. Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite this page with attribution. These figures also inform Men Who Heal, my project dedicated to men’s recovery from eating disorders and addiction. Last reviewed: July 2026.

If you recognise yourself or someone you care about in these numbers, the male eating disorders page describes how treatment works, or you can arrange a confidential consultation.

For treatment of eating disorders in London, see eating disorder treatment in London.