Anorexia Nervosa

With anorexia, the patient thrives on being thin at any cost and this causes the patient's abnormal behaviors that result in a low body weight regardless of the consequences. Amenorrhea is no longer required for someone to be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Significantly low weight is defined as a weight that is less than minimally normal for children and adolescents and less than that is minimally expected. The patient has an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming and persistent behavior that interferes with gaining weight, even though they are significantly underweight

    The patient experiences disturbance in the way that they view their body shape and also a persistent lack of recognition of the seriousness of the current low body weight.

There are two types of Anorexia Nervosa

1. The restricting type
1. Patients restrict food intake to maintain their low weight
2. They do not like to eat in front of other people 
2.  Binge-eating/purging type
1. The restrict calories
2. They binge eat and purge

Some example of how patients suffering from anorexia suffer from distorted thinking (Hooley, et al, 2019).

• “I have a rule when I weigh myself. If I’ve gained then I starve the rest of the day. But if I’ve lost, then I starve too.”
• “Bones define who we really are, let them show.”
• “An imperfect body reflects an imperfect person.”
• “Anorexia is not a self-inflicted disease, it’s a self-controlled lifestyle.”
• “It’s not deprivation, it’s liberation.”

Here are some ways someone suffering from anorexia nervosa might try to conceal their weight loss especially if they know that they are about to be weighed.

•  wearing baggy clothes 
•  carrying hidden bulky objects so that they will weigh more when measured by others
• drinking large amounts of water to increase their weight temporarily.

DSM-5 Criteria for. . .

Anorexia Nervosa

1. Restriction of energy intake relative to requirements, leading to a significantly low body weight in the context of age, sex, developmental trajectory, and physical health. Significantly low weight is defined as a weight that is less than minimally normal or, for children and adolescents, less than that minimally expected.
2. Intense fear of gaining weight or of becoming fat, or persistent behavior that interferes with weight gain, even though at a significantly low weight.
3. Disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or persistent lack of recognition of the seriousness of the current low body weight (Hooley et al, 2019).

• Anorexia is centuries old.
• Religious literature tells of cases of extreme cases of fasting (Hooley, et al., 2019).
• 1689
• Richard Morton - wrote about the first documented cases of anorexia nervosa. An 18-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy both suffered from what they called at the time "nervous consumption" ( Hooley, et al., 2019).
• The girl died eventually because she refused the treatment.
• 1873
• Charles Lasègue in Paris and Sir William Gull in London
• Both wrote about two different cases and described the same symptoms. 
• One case was a 14-year-old girl who was starving herself. They treated her by getting her to eat light food every few hours.
  

References

Hooley, J. M., Nock, M. K., & Butcher, J. N. (2019). Abnormal Psychology (18th ed.).

Pearson Education (US). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780135191033