Objective: Although Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) has existed since the publication of DSM-5 in 2013, research on the descriptive psychopathology of treatment-seeking patients with formal ARFID diagnoses is sparse, and limited to tertiary eating disorder-focused treatment settings where most patients present with weight loss/malnutrition. In these settings, the selective/neophobic symptom presentation is rare compared to other primary eating restrictions. We aimed provide initial descriptive psychopathology of ARFID primary selective/neophobic symptom presentation in an outpatient setting, and to explore the prevalence of the core ARFID symptoms and clinical differences among patients meeting criteria based on weight/nutritional symptoms versus psychosocial impairment only.
Method: We reviewed the charts of 22 consecutive outpatients diagnosed with ARFID caused by selective/neophobic eating, and describe symptoms, impairment, illness trajectory, and demographic features. Patients who met ARFID criteria because of weight loss/nutritional problems were compared to those who met for psychosocial impairment only on demographic and clinical characteristics.
Results: Patients were predominantly male (81.8%) and school-aged (4-11 years). 81.8% had no weight/nutritional symptoms documented by a medical provider. All met criteria for significant psychosocial impairment. There were few differences between patients who did versus did not meet weight loss/nutritional criteria for ARFID; they differed only in age and in the presence of appetite disturbances consistent with another proposed presentation of ARFID.
Discussion: These results provide novel data on the clinical characteristics of individuals who present with a primary presentation of selective/neophobic ARFID, including support for psychosocial impairment as sufficient for fulfilling ARFID criterion A.
Keywords: ARFID; appetite; avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder; chart review; eating; feeding; food neophobia; picky eating; selective eating.
© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.