Murderer Bryan Kohberger is one of many adults and children who have been diagnosed with the eating disorder ARFID in recent years. But just what is ARFID? Here’s what we know about the disorder.
One eating disorder is becoming increasingly prevalent.
Though it didn’t even have a name as early as 10 years ago, ARFID—which stands for Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder—has seen a 200 percent increase in diagnoses since 2017, according to a study cited in The Cut.
Among those determined to have the eating disorder is Bryan Kohberger, the 30-year-old currently serving four consecutive life sentences for the 2022 murders of Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Ethan Chapin.
A June court filing obtained by People named ARFID as one of four “mental health disorders” Kohberger was diagnosed with in the months before he confessed to the murders. The PhD student was also, per the outlet’s docs, diagnosed with level 1 autism, OCD and ADHD.
But just what is ARFID? Generally, according to the Cleveland Clinic, the eating disorder can be defined as an avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder that limits the amount and type of food one eats. But unlike other eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia, ARFID, which is most comment in children but can also affect adults, isn’t related to distorted body image or a desire to lose weight.
ARFID was entered into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—a guide used by healthcare providers to diagnose and classify mental health disorders—as part of the fifth edition in 2013.
According to the DSM-5, per The Cut, ARFID presentations largely fall into three categories: first, those who are simply uninterested in food, very often since birth. In many of these cases, the individuals struggling with ARFID experienced time with a feeding tube as infants and subsequently bypassed the experience of physically eating. Some tube-fed babies can later struggle with developing hunger cues or the mechanics of swallowing.
A second presentation of ARFID involves sensory aversions, with individuals feeling disgust for certain smells, tastes, temperatures and textures, and only being able to tolerate a select few. The presentation is often associated with neurodiversity. Like Bryan, it is common for some people with autism to struggle with ARFID.
Finally, the third most common presentation of ARFID involves a developed fear of eating often after experiencing a traumatic event like choking, or in relation to other mental health disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder.
As the eating disorder has become more widely known and recognized in recent years, there has been a concurrent uptick in diagnoses, with Real Housewives of Orange County’s Emily Simpson recently sharing her 10-year-old son Luke suffers from ARFID.
“Luke has always been a picky eater, but it’s gotten to a point, I would say in the last year, where he just doesn’t eat at all,” Emily shared during a confessional in the season 19 premiere July 10, noting she took Luke to a therapist. “The nutritionist was explaining to me he doesn’t understand when he feels hungry. Food in general disgusts him.”
But while the 49-year-old explained she and husband Shane Simpson—who are also parents to daughter Annabelle, 12, and Luke’s twin Keller—have learned to be “more accommodating and lenient” when it comes to Luke’s eating, understanding hasn’t stopped her worrying nor the disorder’s adverse effects.
“The problem with him not eating anything is that I know he gets low energy,” Emily explained, growing emotional. “It affects his mood, but then he doesn’t make that connection.”
She continued, “I’m worried that he’s not getting the nutrition he needs. I’m worried that he’s the weird kid at school who doesn’t eat and everybody’s going to make fun of him. I want my child to be happy.”
Thankfully, in the time since the series wrapped, Emily said Luke has made great strides.
“Luke is doing much better than when we were filming,” she told E! News in in July. “That was a huge stress for him and also he’s not in school, which was another big stress for him.”
Sharing he’s also been diagnosed with ADHD and OCD, she continued, “He has a very severe separation anxiety when it comes to me and we’ve worked really hard to alleviate that. He’s much more comfortable with me going leaving and coming home now.”
For more stars who have opened up about health challenges, keep reading.
Nikki Garcia’s Breast Implant Injury
The Total Bellas alum revealed that one of her breast implants shifted after an elbow slam from fellow WWE star Piper Niven during a July 2025 wrestling match.
“It’s OK,” she told sister Bella Garcia at the time. “We’re going to get it fixed one day. I told the doctor, I go, ‘Newly divorced, so the minute the boots are hung up, I’m going to come back to you and we’re going to make these girls look real good, because these girls are going to get some action in the future and that can’t look like that.’”
Lupita Nyong’o’s Uterine Fibroids
The 12 Years a Slave star was diagnosed with uterine fibroids—non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the uterus—in 2014, the same year she won an Oscar for performance in the movie.
However, it wasn’t until 2025 when she disclosed her diagnosis, writing on Instagram that she had been “suffering in silence” for more than a decade.
“When we reach puberty, we’re taught periods mean pain, and that pain is simply part of being a woman,” she shared. “We’re struggling alone with something that affects us most.”
Suki Waterhouse’s Hernia
In July 2025, the Daisy Jones & The Six star shared that she had been hospitalized due to a hernia—a gap in the muscular wall that’s commonly found in the abdomen or groin area—caused by wearing tight pants.
“‘Suki you never tweet anymore,’” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Have you ever considered I wore pants so tight 6 months ago it caused a hernia & I’ve been too scared to tell you?”
Brian Austin Green’s Perforated Appendix
The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum revealed in April 2025 that he was recovering from surgery after his appendix nearly burst.
“Last week, I started feeling some pain in my stomach,” Brian said in an Instagram video at the time. “I ended up going to the emergency room, and I had a perforated appendix. Not quite burst, but just before.”
He added, “I’m on the road to recovery. It’s not an easy process. This is my first major surgery.”
Adam Devine’s Long-Term Injury From Childhood Accident
Adam Devine shared that injuries he sustained after getting hit by a cement truck when he was 11 years old are still affecting him to this day.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Devine said in a 2025 episode of the In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast. “I have spasms all over. For a while, [the doctors] told me I was dying—literally, within this last year.”
He noted that pain comes and goes, adding, “My body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it.”
Jason Tartick’s Back Injury
The Bachelor Nation alum shared that he went to the hospital “crawling on all fours” due to overwhelming back pain that was aggravated during an RV trip with a friend.
“Right now, knees to my toes, it’s, like, still tingly, which is crazy,” he said on a March 2025 episode of his Trading Secrets podcast. “And to put in perspective, I don’t know, man, like not to sound douchey, but like two, three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I was squatting probably like 295 pounds. And right now, I can’t do a squat on my foot. I can’t do a one legged squat, I fall. It’s like I had a stroke or something.”
But with the help of a back specialist and some steroids, he added, “We’re on the mend.”
Matt Kirschenheiter’s Heart Attack
Real Housewives of Orange County’s Gina Kirschenheiter shared her ex-husband Matt Kirschenheiter suffered a heart attack in March 2025, but thankfully survived the ordeal.
Tracy Morgan’s Medical Emergency
The 30 Rock star suffered a health scare at a New York Knicks basketball game in March 2025, leading to him being wheeled out of Madison Square Garden.
However, the comedian shared an update on social media the following day, noting it was a case of food poisoning and that he was on the mend.
Christy Carlson Romano’s Eye Injury
The Even Stevens alum shared in February 2025 that she was shot in the face while on a trip to shoot clay pigeons to celebrate husband Brendan Rooney‘s birthday.
“There was another party with us and they unsafely fired in the wrong direction and shot me in the face,” she wrote on Instagram. “@thebrendanrooney immediately sprung into action, assessed me, and rushed me to the hospital. I was hit in 5 places, one was less than an inch from hitting me directly in my right eye.”
The Kim Possible alum continued, “Unfortunately a fragment got lodged behind my eye and it is too risky to remove surgically at this time. Doctors will continue to monitor me (I can see normally at the moment).”
The actress said she was grateful to be alive. “I love my daughters, husband, family, and friends so much,” she said. “I saw my life flash before my eyes and I’m telling you, hug the people around you every chance you can. Life can change in an instant.”
Amy Schumer’s Cushing Syndrome
While the internet isn’t always a kind place, Amy Schumer is happy that, in this case, it helped her get answers.
“The internet really came for me after doing a bunch of press, and I was like, ‘OK everybody, relax,’” Amy recalled of her “puffier” face on a January 2025 episode of Call Her Daddy. “But then doctors were chiming in in the comments and they were like, ‘No no, we think something’s really up. Your face looks so crazy that we think something’s up. And I’m like, ‘Wait, I’m getting trolled by doctors?’”
After these doctors said they thought she had Cushing syndrome and that it may be caused by spiking coritsol levels or steroid injections, the Life & Beth creator thought, “Wait, I have been getting steroid injections in my scars.”
“I had a breast reduction, a C-section, whatever, and so I was getting these steroid injections,” Amy said. “So it gave me this thing called Cushing syndrome, which I wouldn’t have known if the internet hadn’t come for me so hard.”
Toda, Amy is just relieved she’s OK. As she shared in a February 2024 , “Finding out I have the kind of Cushing that will just work itself out and I’m healthy was the greatest news imaginable.”
Casey Fitzgerald’s Neck Injury From Hockey Skate Blade
The AHL player was cut by a fellow player’s skate during a game in December 2024 and received 25 stitches. His father, New Jersey Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald later told ESPN after his son was fully recovered, “We’re very lucky. I don’t wish that on any parent.”
Hailey Bieber’s Blood Clot
Hailey Bieber had the “scariest moment” of her life when she was having breakfast with husband Justin Bieber and started experiencing stroke-like symptoms in March 2022.
“Justin was like, ‘Are you OK?’” the Rhode skincare mogul shared a month later on YouTube, “and I just didn’t respond because I wasn’t sure. And then he asked me again and when I went to respond, I couldn’t speak. The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn’t get a sentence out.”
While Hailey said the facial drooping stopped and her speech came back, she went to the hospital to make sure she was OK.
“They did some scans and they were able to see that I had suffered a small blood clot to my brain,” the model added, “which they labeled and categorized as something called a TIA [Transient Ischemic Attack].”
Later, Hailey went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she found out she had a hole in her heart called a patent foramen ovale (PFO).
She explained the blood clot had traveled into her heart, “escaped” through the hole and went to her brain, leading to the TIA.
Hailey said she had a successful PFO closure procedure and was now feeling great.
Justin Bieber’s Ramsay Hunt Syndrome
The same year Hailey had her health scare, Justin experienced one of his own.
In June 2022, the “Baby” singer shared he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a condition that caused temporary paralysis to parts of his face and forced him to cancel the remainder of his Justice World Tour.
“It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear and my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis,” Justin explained in an Instagram video at the time. “As you can see, this eye is not blinking. I can’t smile on this side of my face. This nostril will not move. So, there’s full paralysis on this side of my face.”
In fact, he told his followers it had gotten “progressively harder to eat.” But after a while, the paralysis went away.
“He’s doing really well,” Hailey said on a June 2022 episode of Good Morning America, later adding, “He’s feeling a lot better. Obviously, it was just a very scary and random situation to happen, but he’s going to be totally OK and I’m just grateful that he’s fine.”
Jamie Foxx’s Brain Bleed & Stroke
While Jamie Foxx initially kept details of his April 2023 hospitalization private, he later opened up about what he went through.
One day in Atlanta, “I was having such a bad headache, so I asked my boy, I said, ‘Listen, I need an aspirin,’” the Oscar winner said in his 2024 Netflix special What Had Happened Was… “Before I could get the Aspirin, I went out. I don’t remember 20 days.”
Jamie said he was initially taken to a doctor who gave him a cortisone shot and then sent him home. However, his concerned sister Deidra Dixon then drove him to a hospital, where they got an answer: He had a brain bleed that led to a stroke.
Twenty days after undergoing an operation, the Django Unchained woke up May 4 in a wheelchair and couldn’t walk. He then went to Chicago for rehabilitation and therapy.
“All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer,” he said, “because I needed every prayer.”
Tracey Yukich’s Medical Emergency on The Biggest Loser
The reality star revealed that she “died” while running a mile during the first challenge of the NBC competition series.
“I don’t remember a lot,” she explained on Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser. “I remember hearing the helicopter. I just felt like I was floating. And then my grandpa was there. And then I saw darkness. But then I saw light. So I knew, I knew I died that day.”
“My organs were literally shutting down,” she continued. “I didn’t realize that I had rhabdomyolysis. And rhabdomyolysis is your body’s way of saying, ‘I’m going to shut down on you.’”
Emilia Clarke’s Brain Aneurysm
Emilia Clarke filmed battle scenes for Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she published an essay in The New Yorker titled “A Battle for My Life.”
Having a bad headache at the gym, “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” the actress wrote. “Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”
She was taken to the hospital for a brain scan.
“The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain,” the Emmy nominee added. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture.”
Emilia had immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, calling the pain “unbearable.” While she was recovering, she continued, she experienced aphasia and was “muttering nonsense.”
A week later, “the aphasia passed,” Emilia added, and she left the hospital a month after being admitted.
At a 2013 brain scan, she learned a growth “doubled in size” and that she needed surgery again.
“When they woke me, I was screaming in pain,” she wrote. “The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn’t operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull.”
Thankfully, Emilia shared, she’s now “at a hundred per cent.”
Cori Broadus’s Stroke
Snoop Dogg‘s daughter Cori Broadus is grateful for her family.
Because after she suffered a “severe stroke” in January 2024, her loved ones rushed to be by her side.
“I texted them that I just had a stroke and sent them a picture,” she told E! News correspondent Will Marfuggi in December 2024. “Everybody just came to my rescue.”
Because of other medical concerns, Cori ended up staying in the hospital longer than she initially expected.
“I could have went home after my stroke, but my lupus wasn’t doing so well,” the Snoop’s Fatherhood: Cori and Wayne’s Story star continued. “My kidneys were failing. It was a lot going on.”
Today, Cori is on the mend.
“I’m doing great,” she added. “I just had a little bit of motor skills that I had to work back on. But other than that, I was fine.”
Shailene Woodley’s Health Battle
Shailene Woodley’s early 20s were not an easy time health-wise.
“It got to the point where I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours, and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” the actress said on a September 2024 episode of the SHE MD Podcast. “It was this conflation of issues and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things.”
So Shailene—who chose to keep the exact condition private—set out to find answers.
“I come from a very holistic background and study herbalism,” she added. “So I was very keen on, ‘I’m going to work with real MDs, [and] I’m also going to work with independent kind of healers.’ Just trying to search for some sense of comfort in my own skin.”
It was a long journey—one that lasted for 10 years.
“Throughout that decade, a lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” the Big Little Lies star noted, “which was, ‘My gosh, if everything I eat hurts my stomach, I’m now suddenly afraid of food.’ And then going into the kind of mental f–ckery that can happen with that of body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own capsule, in my own skin, what that meant, and what that should be.”
After tending to both her physical and mental health, Shailene is feeling much better.
“It was a journey that ultimately physically resolved itself, and I am very healthy,” she shared. “I’m so happy to be able to say that.”
Source: www.eonline.com