What are eating disorders?
Eating disorders are diseases that cause serious disturbances in the way patients assess their weight and body image, with a marked impact of this assessment on their self-concept.
What are the main symptoms of these disorders?
These diseases are accompanied by changes in behaviour, namely in the pattern of food intake, thoughts and emotions.
Typically, individuals with eating disorders become very focused on aspects related to diet and exercise, and are guided by rigid and unhealthy patterns, usually aiming to lose weight. These aspects are of central relevance in the lives of those who suffer from these disorders, leaving behind other aspects that are usually more valued in everyday life.
What are the most common disorders?
The most common disorders are:
- compulsive eating
- bulimia
- anorexia nervosa
How do people with these disorders behave?
Generally, people who suffer from these diseases show great dissatisfaction with their weight, which they consider excessive, even when it is clearly less than the minimum desirable, taking into account their height and age.
Thus, the behavior of these people has as its ultimate goal weight loss, either through:
- restriction of the quantity or quality of food ingested
- excessive physical exercise
- induction of vomiting or
- abuse of laxatives and/or diuretics
In addition, they report episodes of compulsive food intake, especially after variable periods of time, of great food restriction. That is, it is common to ingest large amounts of food in a short period of time, and then, in the case of patients with bulimia nervosa, resort to behaviors that aim to prevent weight gain.
In male patients, the desire for increased muscle mass with increased intake of protein-rich foods, intense physical exercise and sometimes intake of anabolic steroids is common.
How are these diseases diagnosed?
Often, people with these disorders do not recognize that they have a health problem and refuse help. Thus, in the event of suspicion of the presence of one of these diseases, the patient should be referred to a general and family medicine or child and adolescent psychiatry/psychiatry consultation, and then treatment should be carried out by a multidisciplinary intervention (psychiatrist, psychologist, nutritionist and others, if necessary).
What other disorders can lead to eating disorders?
In many cases, eating disorders are associated with other disorders such as:
- depressive
- da anxiety
- Panic
- obsessive-compulsive
- for abuse or dependence on alcohol and other intoxicants
Are eating disorders hereditary?
Eating disorders have a strong hereditary component in their origin (an aspect considered more relevant in anorexia nervosa). However, they also affect people with no known cases of these diseases in the family, but also in people whose relatives suffer from other psychiatric disorders, including depressive disorder.
What are the main consequences of these disruptions?
Eating disorders, when left untreated, can progress to serious clinical conditions, and there is even a risk of death in the most extreme situations, as a consequence of marked malnutrition or changes caused by the induction of vomiting or abuse of laxatives and diuretics or other substances.
What is the prognosis of these eating disorders?
The consequences are more serious the faster or longer the disease progresses, and the prognosis is better when treatment is started early. With proper medical care, patients can improve significantly and often heal.
Source: Portuguese Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health (SPPSM)