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Medical literature shows that 30 to 40 percent of food disorder cases persist for years. Among the famous women who say they have conquered food disorders are the actress Jane Fonda; Ellen Hart Pena, the wife of secretary of Transportation Federico Pena; and Princess Diana of England.

Officials of the National Eating Disorders Screening Program lined up 21 organizations of students and medical professionals. They include the American Psychiatric Association, the National Panhellenic Conference (sororities), USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Public Health Service, the American College Health Association, and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Catherine Baker, coordinator of Eating Disorders Services at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, is very sensitive to the subject. “At age 14,” she explains, “I developed an eating disorder for a few years because I had been assaulted. Eating disorders help us survive pain. I went through a deep depression. I hope the screening program will help students see that these behaviors hurt their lives.”

Becky Guiffre, a student at the University of Maryland at College Park, became bulimic at age 12. “I would not eat for a few days,” she says. “Then I’d gorge, then vomit 10 to 12 times a day. A specialist looked at the lining of my stomach: No lining was left. I can’t say I never mess up now. But, mostly, I am recovered.”

The National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, estimates that 5 million Americans (nine women for every man among them) have eating disorders. But there are hints of improvement, probably as a result of changes in diet and self-image. The psychologist Todd F. Heatherton and his colleagues from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, report a drop of almost 10 percent in eating disorders at Harvard/Radcliffe, where students were surveyed in 1982 and again in 1992. Still, they found that one woman in 10 reported symptoms of serious eating problems. Their findings appeared in the November 1995 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Dr. David Herzog, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and head of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center, is scientific director of the screening program. “Our culture demands thinness,” he says, “especially among women. If the screenings help us identify symptoms before conditions become full-blown, we can help people back to health much earlier.”

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GENERAL HEALTH