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Anorexia has a higher mortality rate than any other mental illness and most deaths occur in women. The feminist view is that we are all at risk of developing eating disorders and that the battle for control over the young woman’s life between mother and daughter is key in how anorexia begins. However, current evidence suggests mothers have been unfairly blamed, and that genetic factors play a powerful part in our vulnerability to eating disorders, with genes interacting with environmental factors. Services and expertise to treat young people with eating disorders are lacking and talk of ‘terminal anorexia’ is abhorrent. The fact that these disorders affect more women than men has influenced the level of clinical and research funding that they get. Services must move away from their reliance on BMI to decide who gets care, and their practice of only accepting those who fit into rigid diagnostic boxes. We all must all challenge, as feminism urged us, our society’s obsession with body image. However, feminism also needs to embrace the science that explains how some women are much more vulnerable to developing eating disorder than others, and why biology also matters.
Edited by
David Kingdon, University of Southampton,Paul Rowlands, Derbyshire Healthcare NHS foundation Trust,George Stein, Emeritus of the Princess Royal University Hospital
Eating disorders are complex and serious illnesses that can result in physical and psychiatric comorbidities, medical emergencies and progressive health consequences. Although general psychiatrists may be called upon to assist in emergencies or differential diagnoses, training in this area has been limited. The author attempts to fill the gap by providing a summary of the most recent advances in the field of eating disorders in this chapter to help orient trainees and general psychiatrists. This chapter provides an overview of the most recent changes to the DSM-5 and ICD-11 diagnostic categories for eating disorders, as well as their epidemiology, aetiology and treatment, including the management of complications and life-threatening medical emergencies.
The chapter summarises recent advances in the genetic and neurobiological understanding of eating disorders, as well as emerging new research. These scientific advances have the potential to contribute to the development of new, more-effective eating disorder treatments in the future.
Anorexia in cancer patients has a variety of causes and impairs patients’ quality of life. However, there have been few reports of thiamine deficiency (TD) playing a role in anorexia during palliative care. The objective of this report was to describe such a case.
Methods
An 82-year-old woman with advanced cervical cancer was admitted for palliative care because of progressive disease. One month after admission, she developed myoclonus on the left side, difficulty speaking, slurred speech, and drooping of the left corner of the mouth, with no consciousness disturbance. She also developed nausea and complained of decreased dietary intake for more than 2 weeks.
Results
The patient’s thiamine level, which had been measured 2 weeks earlier, was 27 ng/ml, which was below the normal range, and 100 mg of thiamine was administered intravenously. After 2 hours, the patient’s neurological findings resolved, and her dietary intake improved from 30% to 40% of meals to 90% to 100%. Subsequently, the patient did not experience similar symptoms, and her clinical course was stable. Based on the patient’s clinical course, gastrointestinal beriberi was diagnosed.
Significance of results
This case shows that TD may cause anorexia. Many patients who receive palliative care have decreased dietary intake. Consequently, such patients may present with gastrointestinal beriberi, as in the present case. Appropriate diagnosis and treatment may contribute to increasing such patients’ quality of life. It may be necessary to differentiate TD from other conditions as a cause of anorexia in patients receiving palliative care.
This chapter illustrates the complex functions that eating disorder behaviour can take, including self-punishment, emotional avoidance, empowerment, mastery, self-regulation, and appeasement of others. The schema therapy approach encourages disaggregating these functions, personifying them, understanding them, and directing dialogues between them. A case study illustrates the way in which the schema mode model can be applied to work with eating disorder symptoms alongside complex trauma. A sufficient level of medical and nutritional stability (as indicated by blood tests and weight) must be reached in order to provide sufficient safety for therapy to proceed. A key component of schema therapy is to understand the unmet needs and schemas that have led to the development of an eating disorder. In schema therapy, the client gradually learns to reconnect with her/his inner child states and needs through extensive therapeutic work – which includes imagery rescripting, chairwork mode dialogues, and somatic, cognitive, and behavioural techniques. Coping modes are not just bypassed, but through imagery and chairwork are actively acknowledged and integrated to form a Healthy Adult ‘team’ that works to prioritise the inner child modes and ultimately meet the client’s nutritional, physiological, and emotional needs.
There is considerable evidence of mentalizing problems in patients with eating disorders, with non-mentalizing modes, especially in relation to body weight and shape, being dominant. The mentalizing model assumes the existence of developmental vulnerabilities, especially during adolescence, and that the range of different symptoms associated with eating disorders may have the common function of being attempts at social self-regulation. Controlling eating is a way of managing social and emotional developmental milestones that the person perceives as insuperable. Patients with eating disorders become stuck in a low mentalizing experience of themselves and their bodies. Clinical treatment based on this formulation is discussed as it is applied in a combined program of individual and group psychotherapy, together with psychoeducation.
This chapter examines the neurobehavioural impacts in adults of both starvation (food restriction/cessation) and energy restriction for life extension. Section 8.2 covers animals, finding that restriction causes hippocampal damage and stress responses. Section 8.3 covers humans. Short-term fasting (<1 week) has limited cognitive effects, primarily increasing attention to food. Long-term fasting (weeks-to-years) has been studied naturalistically (e.g., famines, hunger strikes) and in the lab (e.g., Minnesota starvation study). Findings are convergent, with dramatic increases in appetite, low mood and egocentricity. The neural basis of these effects can be studied indirectly in people with anorexia nervosa, although this is complicated by pre-existing brain changes that may dispose to this disease. The impacts of cachexia and aging are also examined, alongside the longer-term impacts of food restriction post-recovery. Part three examines the animal and human energy restriction literature. While lifespan extension can occur in small mammals, the evidence in primates and humans for beneficial effects is equivocal.
It is humbling to be human. Humilitatem and humanitas have always been connected. So, Shakespeare’s characters know when they are "not gentle, not humble" [Love’s, 5,2,617]. But living in an age of service, their creator was also conscious of the fine line between humility and humiliation. Persistently, his plays therefore stage the "Cinderella" scenario of a "proud humility" [All’s Well, 1,1,172], as if he had internalized the self-abjection by which power abases itself in "the gown of humility" [Coriolanus, 2,3,36]. Almost all of Shakespeare’s references to humility describe it as an act. Hence, "I have sounded the very base-string of humility" [1Henry IV, 2,5,5], reports his most winning king. In staging his own "abject position," as a professional "waiter" on the mighty, "our humble author" [2Henry IV, Epi, 23] thereby seems to anticipate modern skepticism towards the false modesty of the "humbled visaged" [Love’s, 2,,34], the "meekness and humility" that is "cramm’d" with "arrogancy, spleen and pride" [Henry VIII, 2,4107-108]. This chapter on humility argues that Shakespeare’s dramatization of the supposed virtue has never been more relevant than in our own populist times, when the clown prince dives into our hearts, "with humble and familiar" smiles [Richard II, 1,4,25-27].
Anorexia nervosa is an eating behavior disorder that is often related to various personality factors. The relationship between obsessive compulsive disorder and eating Disorders has been highlighted.
Objectives
To present a clinical case of a patient with eating disorder and gastric bezoar, secondary to compulsive hair ingestion.
Methods
Bibliographic review of articles published in relation to the comorbidity of these disorders, based on articles published in the last 5 years in Pubmed.
Results
26-year-old female. Diagnosis of restrictive anorexia nervosa. She was admitted to the hospital on two occasions for nutritional disorders. In the last admission, she reported greater anxiety and significant weight loss. She reports that she has limited her food intake, but she does feel thin and is unable to eat for fear of gaining weight. Ruminative thoughts about her body image. During admission, the patient expressed a sensation of fullness, nausea and vomiting, later observing in abdominal X-ray and gastroscopy, the presence of a gastric trichobezoar, which was finally resolved conservatively.
Conclusions
Trichotillomania is observerd in 1 in 2000 people, trichophagia is even less frequent. According to DSM- V, these disorders are grouped within obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. A Trichobezoar is a conglomerate that can be found in the stomach or intestine, composed mainly of hair, previously ingested. Trichotillomania can be associated with anorexia nervosa, especially in patients with obsessive personality traits, which occurs frequently. The gastric slowing that patients with anorexia often present is a factor that favors the formation of the bezoar
Anorexia nervosa has an important burden on both patients and families, with important comorbidities such as depression and obsessive symptoms. These are more resistant to pharmacological treatment than in non-anorexia patients, due to both biological and psychological mechanisms. Electroconvulsive therapy is the best available therapy for treatment resistant depression making it a treatment to consider in treatment resistant depression in anorexia though only case reports exist.
Objectives
To review the current evidence for electroconvulsive therapy of depression in patients with anorexia nervosa as well as it’s ethical challenges
Methods
Non-systematic review of the literature with selection of scientific articles published in the past 10 years; by searching Pubmed and Medscape databases using the combination of MeSH descriptors. The following MeSH terms were used: “electroconvulsive therapy”, “anorexia nervosa”.
Results
Electroconvulsive therapy in anorexia has no controlled trials with mostly case reports available on scientific databases. It presents important challenges due to patient age, medical status and ethical challenges. Even less evidence exist for electroconvulsive therapy in children and adolescents than for adults, anorexia can complicate medical status presenting an anesthetic and life-support challenge and it’s egosyntonicity can place a legal and ethical challenge when patient refuses treatment.
Conclusions
Anorexia has a dramatic burden on patients and families affected, with integrated evidence-based treatment being necessary both for treating the current episode and for remission prevention. Case-reports show that electroconvulsive therapy can play a role on treatment resistant depression in anorexia.
Hepatic ones are some of the most described somatic complications in anorexia nervosa (AN) affected patients. They can be due to malnutrition, which is the more usual thing, or due to re-feeding. The first one can lead to more marked elevations of the hepatic enzymes, especially alanine-aminotransferase (ALT). It’s been also described the relation between a sharply decreased body mass index (BMI) and this kind of complications, but there are still to determine more predictors.
Objectives
Identifying clinical predictors of hepatic complications in AN.
Methods
We analysed data from 71 AN affected patients hospitalized at Bellvitge Hospital from January 2016 to October 2021. We used IBM SPSS Statistics 22 to do all the statistics in this work.
Results
The medium age of the sample was 27.66 years with 10.8 years of evolution of AN. The medium BMI was 13.88. 33.80% of them had some sort of hepatic enzymes elevation, two of them a several one. AST, ALT and ALP were significantly more elevated in those patients with lower BMI. GGT was significantly more elevated in patients with more years of disorder development. We didn’t identify correlation between any purgative method and hepatic alterations.
Conclusions
The elevation of ALT, AST and ALP seems to be related with the BMI of the patients, while the elevation of the GGT turns out to be related to the time of evolution of the eating disorder. Purgative methods don’t seem to be related to the development of hepatic alterations in AN.
Eating disorders, while relatively rare, have the highest mortality rates of all mental disorders. When combined with diabetes, they have poor outcomes in terms of recurrent diabetic ketoacidosis, premature development of microvascular complications and mortality. Eating disorders are common in diabetes and, where present, are associated with a much higher incidence of diabetic complications and a sevenfold increase in mortality. The term ‘diabulimia’ is increasingly used by patient groups and in the general (and social) media. However, it is not a diagnostic term; there has been no professional agreement regarding what constitutes ‘diabulimia’ or what may constitute a minimum set of criteria for diagnosis. It is important for endocrinologists to have a high index of suspicion for eating disorders in patients with diabetes (especially young women with type 1 diabetes). Psychiatrists need to consider and treat insulin omission as a form of purging in eating disorders.
The objective is to determine whether variability in the MSRA gene, related to obesity and several psychiatric conditions, may be relevant for psychopathological symptoms common in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and/or for the susceptibility to the disorder. A total of 629 women (233 AN patients and 396 controls) were genotyped for 14 tag-SNPs. Psychometric evaluation was performed with the EDI-2 and SCL-90R questionnaires. Genetic associations were carried out by logistic regression controlling for age and adjusting for multiple comparisons (FDR method). Two tag-SNPs, rs11249969 and rs81442 (with a pairwise r2 value of 0.41), were associated with the global EDI-2 score, which measures EDI-related psychopathology (adjusted FDR-q = 0.02 and 0.04, respectively). Moreover, rs81442 significantly modulated all the scales of the SCL-90R test that evaluates general psychopathology (FDR-q values ranged from 4.1E-04 to 0.011). A sliding-window analysis using adjacent 3-SNP haplotypes revealed a proximal region of the MSRA gene spanning 187.8 Kbp whose variability deeply affected psychopathological symptoms of the AN patients. Depression was the symptom that showed the strongest association with any of the constructed haplotypes (FDR-q = 3.60E−06). No variants were found to be linked to AN risk or anthropometric parameters in patients or controls. Variability in the MSRA gene locus modulates psychopathology often presented by AN patients.
Anorexia of females adolescents has a high mortality rate and heavy health, psychological, family consequences even in case of survival.
Objectives
To reduce the mortality rate and the consequences of anorexia by providing a theory that allows us to have early or even predictive diagnosis
Methods
25 years ago I found blood type (O, A, B, AB) difference between an anorexic patient and her mother. Pregnancy had been with placental detachment and birth was traumatic, presumed causes of a mother/daughter blood contact. From that day on, I checked, in the case of Anorexia of the Female Adolescent, the blood types of the anorexic girl and her mother.
Results
In my collection of data (more than 100 cases in 25 years): only the girls who have a different blood type (O, A, B, AB) from the mother are anorexic and from the patient’s history, we could think of a mother/daughter blood contact during the pregnancy. There are no exceptions in my data. My new theory is that Anorexia of the Female Adolescent, in addition to the girl’s psychological causes, needs a “conditio sine qua non” (a necessary but not sufficient condition): Different mother/daughter blood types (O,A,B,AB) and traumatic contact between the two blood types during pregnancy and/or birth”.
Conclusions
My theory facilitates early diagnosis (Preventive Medicine) by limiting observation, for Anorexia risk, to only daughters with a different blood type than that of the mother. Recognizing this “conditio sine qua non” for Anorexia of the Female Adolescent allows us an early diagnosis and a predictive hypothesis.
We present the case of a patient with schizophrenia who presents with restriction of intake, fear of gaining weight and alteration in the way of perceiving herself in which we ask ourselves if these behavioral alterations are secondary to her diagnosis of schizophrenia to an anorexia nervosa independent of previous diagnosis.
Objectives
We propose to carry out a differential diagnosis of alterations in the perception of self-image in a patient with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. We suggest that these alterations may be secondary to alterations in the experience of the self present due to their psychosis.
Methods
In the differential diagnosis of the cause of alterations in self-image and fear of gaining weight, we rely on the psychiatric interview, the study of previous history and different scales: - Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) - Gardner Body Image Assessment - Weight, body image and self-esteem scale E-PICA - IPASE scale
Results
In this patient in whom the differential diagnosis of the cause of her dietary restrictions and weight loss is proposed, there does not seem to be any psychotic symptoms that produce these alterations.
Conclusions
In the alterations in self-image in those psychotic patients, there is a doubt as to whether these could be secondary to alterations in the perception of the self typical of psychotic diseases or, on the contrary, be secondary to the spectrum of Eating Disorders.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, in parallel with societal changes from welfarism to the counterculture, the legacy of the child guidance and psychodynamic approaches gave way to more active, transparent and fast-moving therapies. Family/systemic therapy involved the whole family, training practitioners from all disciplines. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) was developed as an alternative effective psychological treatment. A variety of longitudinal and epidemiological research approaches developed, providing a variety of ways of measuring the presence and impact of mental health problems. Conditions such as anorexia of childhood, self-harming and neurodevelopmental disorders – autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – have been identified. Despite attempts to ‘shrink the state’ in the 1980s, a continuing theme has been the recognition of the hidden yet pervasive traumatic impact of maltreatment many children suffer. There is a lifespan impact of adversity on mental and physical health and the need for a trauma-informed care approach.
Chapter 5 argues that food refusal resonates in the early modern theatre as a gendered mode of resistance. It begins by considering the contemporary phenomenon of 'miraculous maid' pamphlets, which recounted supposedly factual accounts of prodigious acts of religiously motivated food refusal. It then turns to Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) and George Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears (1604). It places these plays in the context of changes to religious practice, contemporary understandings of the female body and the space of the household. It argues that in the context of female food refusal, hunger has the capacity to function as a form of parodic obedience to the norms of contemporary gender ideology. By carrying dictates of privacy and closure to a point of often terminal excess, these texts query or satirise the double standard within early modern English society.
Anorexia nervosa has a prevalence of 0.5–3% in adolescents, placing this population at increased risk of cardiac anomalies including arrhythmias, pericardial effusion, and myocardial dysfunction. Our objective is to describe cardiovascular anomalies observed by tissue Doppler imaging in patients with anorexia nervosa.
Methods:
We retrospectively reviewed electrocardiogram, Holter, and echocardiography findings in 28 patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.
Results:
Electrocardiogram was abnormal in 71% of patients with sinus bradycardia observed in 57%. Holter confirmed sinus bradycardia without significant pauses. Prolonged QTc, low voltage, and ectopic beats were each seen in 14% of patients. Wenckebach atrioventricular block was observed in one patient. Supraventricular or ventricular tachycardia was not observed. Echocardiography showed structurally normal heart in all patients. Pericardial effusion was seen in 7.1% of patients and left ventricular mass was decreased in 10.7%. Mean ejection fraction was 0.73 and mean fractional shortening was 38.4%. Tissue Doppler imaging revealed systolic or diastolic dysfunction in four patients with e’, a’, and s’ velocities in the lateral and septal basal segments more than two standard deviations below the mean. Two patients had decreased left ventricular mass but no significant difference in disease duration from the group. Basal segment velocities below one standard deviation were also observed in an additional seven patients.
Conclusion:
A trend for decreased tissue Doppler imaging velocities was seen in 25.0% of patients, while significant systolic and diastolic dysfunction was seen in 14.3% of patients, associated with a significant reduction in left ventricular mass and independent of disease duration.
The relations between embodiment and temporality reach from the micro-temporality of conscious experience to the enactment of human existence. First, the basic internal time consciousness is marked by the rhythmicity of vital processes (heart beat, respiratory rhythm, daily periods, etc.). Moreover, the bodily drives, urges, and needs, which may be subsumed under the term conation, crucially determine the future-directed temporality of primary experience. On the other hand, the body forms an extract of sensorimotor and affective experience which are sedimented in implicit or body memory, thus shaping an individual's capacities and dispositions. Finally, existential temporality is essentially characterized by the vital processes of birth, growth, aging, and dying.
Body, time, and intersubjectivity are equally interconnected. First, interbodily resonance establishes the primary experience of the shared present, beginning in the child's early development. Thus, a basic contemporality emerges, which later continues in social synchronizations and temporal orders as the basis of social life. However, this temporal alignment is also subject to desynchronizations, for example, in backlogs of tasks, in guilt, remorse, or grief – situations that require processes of psychosocial resynchronization.
All these interconnections are subject to various kinds of disturbances which are also found in psychopathology and thus crucially determine the emergence and course of mental disorders.
The presence of subthreshold psychotic symptoms in adolescents with eating disorders is poorly described. This study provides a detailed characterization of adolescents affected by eating disorders in the absence or presence of subthreshold psychotic symptoms, taking into account a wide set of sociodemographic, psychological, and clinical variables.
Methods.
Ninety-four adolescents diagnosed with eating disorders were interviewed, focusing on clinical anamnesis and sociodemographic data collection. The Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States (CAARMS) was used to assess the presence (HR+) or absence (HR−) of subthreshold psychosis. The clinicians completed a questionnaire on eating disorders severity, whereas patients provided self-report measures of global social functioning and psychological symptoms associated with eating disorders.
Results.
Attenuated psychotic symptoms were highly frequent (84% of subjects). HR+ patients experienced more frequently purging behaviors and dysmorphophobia and received a greater amount of antipsychotic drugs. Compared to HR− counterparts, HR+ patients reported higher eating disorders severity and psychological symptoms (i.e., ineffectiveness, interpersonal and affective problems) associated with eating disorders. Finally, a significant correlation between global social functioning and eating disorders severity emerged only for HR− subjects.
Conclusions.
These descriptive data are warranted to identify a potential psychotic core in eating disorders, mainly concerning body image and weight as well as specific psychological features. The availability of reliable and valid markers of risk can further increase our capacity to detect the early emergence of psychosis in adolescents with eating disorders, whose outcome might be worsened by the presence of psychotic symptoms.
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a young-onset psychiatric illness, for which the etiology remains unknown and presents a high heritability. Thus, the genetic component is estimated to be 70%. To identify the vulnerability genes to AN, different approaches of molecular genetic are performed, including linkage analysis, the candidate gene association study and, the Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS). Some polymorphisms of candidate genes, such as the BDNF gene that encodes for the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, were found associated with AN in several studies. In addition to the DNA polymorphisms, there are several other changes around the DNA information, like methylation or the histone modifications, named epigenetic, that modulate the transcription of genes. Thus, first descendents after the Dutch famine in the Second World War have showed a higher risk of impaired glucose tolerance in adulthood. And women exposed to famine in utero presented DNA methylation differences but without link of cause or consequence between famine event and epigenetic changes. To date, only few events of methylation in specific candidate genes have been investigated in AN. Thus, an hypermethylation of the DRD2 gene's promoter was found associated with a downregulation of this gene expression in AN compared to healthy control women (HCW), using leucocytes. While a hypermethylation of the DAT1 promoter was observed correlated with an upregulation of this gene expression. Another study has showed no difference of the methylation level of the Proopiomelanocortin (POMC) promoter between the goups of HCW, underweight AN (acAN) and weight-recovered AN (recAN). But, the expression of POMC was significantly higher in acAN compared to recAN and HCW, and correlated with the leptin levels. These studies suggest that both the etiology and the pathologic consequences of AN could be derived by epigenetic factors, such as the methylation.