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Field trials have just been completed. Whether ARFID makes it into the DSM-5 depends on whether the diagnosis can be reliably made by doctors in the “real world,” researchers says.

The psychiatric manual is in the midst of its first major revision since 1994. The next edition is due out in 2013.

The first volume, published in 1952, contained 28 disorders. The current one lists 357, and runs 886 pages long.

ARFID would replace and expand “feeding disorder of infancy or early childhood” to reflect the fact that the problem can occur across the age range, says Dr. Timothy Walsh, chair of the expert work group recommending ARFID be included in the DSM.

Walsh says the diagnosis would give a home to people with eating problems who don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for any other diagnosis and who end up lumped in a catch-all category called eating disorders “not otherwise specified.”

“And that’s unsatisfactory, for everybody,” says Walsh, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute.

“Patients don’t like it because they think they’ve got a real problem that at least deserves a name. And it really inhibits the study of problems, because there’s no common language.”

According to the criteria, a diagnosis of ARFID could be made in people who don’t eat enough, who show little interest in eating or who eat only a limited number of foods. Sometimes it’s the result of an “aversive” or unpleasant experience — for example, a child who gets sick with stomach flu or vomiting who becomes too scared to eat.