Anorexia nervosa visited and revisited: weight is the issue
Brown, N.W.
Journal of the American Medical Women's Association 48(1): 23-26
1993
ISSN/ISBN: 0098-8421 PMID: 8436792 Document Number: 412820
Anorexia nervosa is known as a psychiatric disorder. Many practitioners seem unaware that a patient in a starvation state is cognitively impaired and thus a poor candidate for psychotherapy. Weight restoration is a prerequisite to other treatment modalities. Many practitioners and all patients fail to recognize this illness because of a prevailing cultural idealization of thinness. Since these patients initially seem so compliant in treatment, valuable time is lost by those who fail to understand the patient's deceptiveness and the life-threatening potential of the disease.