Eating Disorder Clinics

Anorexia or anorexia nervosa (AN) is a disease. In anorexia, the mental focus of a person continuously revolves around an obsessive and compulsive psychological need to lose weight through starvation and become thin. Anorexia treatments depend upon many factors including the physical, emotional, and mental condition of anorexics.

The strange aspect about the mental status of an anorexic is that even when she/he has lost weight to an extreme extent, that anorexic is still not able to assess her/his condition correctly. The anorexic still feels an obsessive need to lose more weight. This cycle continues to such an extent that medical complications can arise. An anorexic could even die due to such complications.

Anorexia treatments form the scope of this article.

A little background is perhaps necessary. Statistics have shown that approximately 95% anorexics are females in the 13 to 30 year age bracket. The rest comprise people of all age groups and include boys, men, and adult women.

Societal mores, occupation, craze for thinness, lack of love and attention, withdrawal symptoms, a need to hide from oneself some other serious emotional or other issue, and hereditary factors are all thought to combine in various forms and contribute significantly towards the development of anorexia nervosa.

All these factors, as applicable in specific anorexic cases, affect the sequence and type of treatment followed.

Many treatment plans have been devised for anorexics. Specific needs of an anorexic decide the one that will be followed.

Generally, the sequence followed comprises treatment of any serious medical complications first, followed by weight gain, and then therapy for correcting the psychological eccentricity that caused anorexia nervosa in an individual.

Weight gain is the most important part of any treatment plan for anorexia. Treatment for other aspects of anorexia cannot be initiated successfully, without this. Weight gain in an anorexic is effective in causing requisite changes in the mental and emotional profile of an anorexic.

A person's age, duration of anorexia, weight and medical condition, living arrangements and lifestyle, other diseases such as binge eating, laxative abuse, and vomiting, results of previous treatments are some of the factors that could determine the line of treatment.

Individual psychotherapy, support groups, medication, and/or hospitalization are some treatments for anorexia. Specialist supportive clinical management (SSCM), family therapy or family-based treatment, and nutrition intervention that includes nutritional counseling by a registered dietitian, are other treatments.

Some other treatments include use of Quetiapine to reduce sores on positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) in anorexia nervosa patients and reduce depression and anxiety. Olanzapine is used to regain healthy body weight, cause reduction in delusional thinking, improvement in sleep, body image, and anxiety. However, more clinical trials are required to establish its role in anorexia therapy.

Physical treatment, marital therapy, group therapy, and intensive outpatient cognitive behavior therapy are some other treatments.

There are many more aspects and types of anorexia treatments. You can search these on the Internet.

Eating Disorder Clinics |