Comorbidity of Axis I Disorders Among Eating-Disordered Subjects in Japan

One hundred seventy-one Japanese patients with eating disorders (EDs) were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R-Patient version (SCID-P) to investigate the lifetime comorbidity of anxiety, mood, and psychoactive substance use (PSUD) disorders. Both lifetime mood and anxiety disorders were found to be similar in prevalence and content to those reported in Western countries. Likewise, a close association with major depression and bulimic subtypes was considered consistent across culture. However, compared with Western countries, PSUDs were less prevalent in our bulimics, which might be due to sociocultural or ethnic differences. Thus, a linkage between EDs and comorbid axis I disorders may be heterogeneous, including one aspect characterized as transculturally consistent and the other as vulnerable to the sociocultural background of the subjects.