EATING DISORDERS IN ADOLESCENTS

OBJECTIVE: To diagnosis the prevalence of adolescents who present eating disorders in special, the binge eating. METHODS: Adolescent between 15 and 18 years of both sex from de big Sao Paulo had been studied (n = 26), in order to measure the prevalence of been abnormal alimentary behaviors. It was used Binge Eating Scale (BES). The body mass index (BMI) and the points of cut chosen to classify the adolescents how much to the nutritional status in accordance to the percentile of the BMI. How much to the partner-economic classification, Brazilian Association of Companies of Research was opted to the ABEP criterion. RESULTS: The sample was composed of 65.4% of feminine sex and 34.6% of the masculine sex. In relation to the BMI, 80.8% had presented normal, 7.7% underweight and 11.5% obese. On the partner-economic level the predominant class was class C (50%). It had trend of the masculine gender to present greater weight in relation to the feminine gender, however the BMI was similar despite of the gender. The feminine gender presented greater trend (n: 4) in showing to moderate symptoms the binge eating than the masculine gender where the percentage was null. Both sex do not present serious binge eating disorder. CONCLUSION: The instrument applied in this study -BES easily revealed being used with the objective to identify the risk individuals, but he is limited therefore does not consider frequency as calculus, thus, it is unknown how many times the individual had compulsion and as this classification was accomplished or either if it was moderate or serious.