Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION: THE EXPERIENCE OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
- PART II THE EXPERIENCE SAMPLING METHOD: PROCEDURES AND ANALYSES
- PART III EXPERIENCE SAMPLING STUDIES WITH CLINICAL SAMPLES
- 7 Variability of schizophrenia symptoms
- 8 The daily life of ambulatory chronic mental patients
- 9 ‘Goofed-up’ images: thought sampling with a schizophrenic woman
- 10 The social ecology of anxiety: theoretical and quantitative perspectives
- 11 Consequences of depression for the experience of anxiety in daily life
- 12 Dysphoric moods in depressed and non-depressed adolescents
- 13 Capturing alternate personalities: the use of Experience Sampling in multiple personality disorder
- 14 Bulimia in daily life: a context-bound syndrome
- 15 Alcohol and marijuana use in adolescents' daily lives
- 16 Drug craving and drug use in the daily life of heroin addicts
- 17 Stress, coping and cortisol dynamics in daily life
- 18 Vital exhaustion or depression: a study of daily mood in exhausted male subjects at risk for myocardial infarction
- 19 Blood pressure and behavior: mood, activity and blood pressure in daily life
- PART IV THERAPEUTIC APPLICATIONS OF THE EXPERIENCE SAMPLING METHOD
- PART V PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH APPLICATIONS: PRACTICAL ISSUES and ATTENTION POINTS
- CLOSING Looking to the future
- References
- List of contributors
- Index
14 - Bulimia in daily life: a context-bound syndrome
from PART III - EXPERIENCE SAMPLING STUDIES WITH CLINICAL SAMPLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION: THE EXPERIENCE OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
- PART II THE EXPERIENCE SAMPLING METHOD: PROCEDURES AND ANALYSES
- PART III EXPERIENCE SAMPLING STUDIES WITH CLINICAL SAMPLES
- 7 Variability of schizophrenia symptoms
- 8 The daily life of ambulatory chronic mental patients
- 9 ‘Goofed-up’ images: thought sampling with a schizophrenic woman
- 10 The social ecology of anxiety: theoretical and quantitative perspectives
- 11 Consequences of depression for the experience of anxiety in daily life
- 12 Dysphoric moods in depressed and non-depressed adolescents
- 13 Capturing alternate personalities: the use of Experience Sampling in multiple personality disorder
- 14 Bulimia in daily life: a context-bound syndrome
- 15 Alcohol and marijuana use in adolescents' daily lives
- 16 Drug craving and drug use in the daily life of heroin addicts
- 17 Stress, coping and cortisol dynamics in daily life
- 18 Vital exhaustion or depression: a study of daily mood in exhausted male subjects at risk for myocardial infarction
- 19 Blood pressure and behavior: mood, activity and blood pressure in daily life
- PART IV THERAPEUTIC APPLICATIONS OF THE EXPERIENCE SAMPLING METHOD
- PART V PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH APPLICATIONS: PRACTICAL ISSUES and ATTENTION POINTS
- CLOSING Looking to the future
- References
- List of contributors
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The sudden widespread appearance of bulimia nervosa in the last 15 years has given psychiatry the opportunity, usually reserved for pathologists, to test its skills at identifying, describing, and developing a treatment for a new disorder. Given this challenge, controversy quickly emerged between those who sought to assimilate it into existing nosology and those invested in defining bulimia as a new disease entity. One viewpoint has seen the cycle of binge eating and purging that characterizes bulimics as merely a new symptomatic expression of existing disorders, particularly affective disorders. Another has sought to characterize it as the manifestation of a novel condition with a unique internal organization.
In this paper we demonstrate that information on the day-to-day patterns of patients' lives can be useful in clarifying the structure of pathology associated with a condition such as bulimia. In particular, we show bulimia to be associated with a disturbed experience of daily solitude. Since the controversy about bulimia is most acute for the substantial subclass of bulimic patients who have never met the criteria of anorexia nervosa, we will focus on this group. We also demonstrate that information on daily life, which describes the disease as patients experience it and localizes its manifestation, is particularly useful if our goal is to engage patients as allies in a process of treatment.
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- The Experience of PsychopathologyInvestigating Mental Disorders in their Natural Settings, pp. 167 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
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