More than 21 percent of female undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania engage regularly in binges of uncontrollable eating or in the deliberate purging of the food they have eaten, according to an early November survey by the University's student health service.

The study is the first effort by an Ivy League college to measure the incidence of Bulimia--a psychological disorder afflicting men and women of all ages but most prevalent among females in the 18 to 25 age group.

Patients suffering from Bulimia, which was recognized as a disease by the American Psychiatric Society in 1980, go through periods of eating large amounts of food--sometimes as long as 10 hours--followed by vomiting or a purging their systems through laxative overdoses.

An additional 46 percent of the 1,000 women surveyed said they had at least once engaged in binging--uncontrollable eating--or purging.

Marjeanne Collins, U. Penn's student health assistant director, told the Daily Pennsylvanian--the university student paper--that the survey also probably underestimates the extent of the disorder on campus because afflicted students are the least likely to respond to the questionaire.

Equal Performan

Collins also said that the 21 percent who showed some form of bulimic behavior had no measurable differences in grade point average, leadership, and extracurricular and sports involvement from other students.

Elizabeth D. Babcock, head of the Clinics Managers Office at Harvard's University Health Service, said that Bulimia is a "major problem" at Harvard as well, but she estimates that it is "not nearly as serious as the survey suggests U. Penn's problem is."

However, Randolph Katlin Jr., Chief of Psychiatry at UHS, said that although there have been no university efforts to survey female undergraduates, the disorder "may well be as prevalent at Harvard as at U.-Penn."

"Bulimia, like the closely related condition Anorexia nervosa, often strike women who are intelligent, achievement oriented and from upper middle class, seemingly perfect, families. The Ivy League in general probably has more than a normal share of Bulimics and Anorexics," he said.

The majority of afflicted women at the University probably do not come into UHS, and their disorders go undiagnosed for as long as 5 to 10 years, he added.

Depression

Katlin explained that this is because "Bulimia serves as an outlet for the underlying cause of the condition--depression, adding, "a student can thus appear perfectly normal but retain a great underlying feeling of depression which might otherwise be revealed in some other way."

At UHS, group psychotherapy has proved the most effective treatment for the cases which have been diagnosed, he said.

Still, he added, the road to recovery can be especially painful because Bulimia represents the tip of the iceberg. "Before a person recovers from Bulimia, she must work out sometimes quite complex psychological problems," he said.