ED Bites

The basic goals of eating disorder treatment are to reduce or eliminate ED symptoms, address co-morbid disorders, and improve quality of life. When researchers study these treatment in clinical trials, they generally focus on the first issue and seek to ask whether this treatment reduces ED symptoms. It’s not a bad goal for an ED […]

Besides the (obvious) binge/purge behaviors, one of the most common features of bulimia is self-harm. A recent study of adolescent ED outpatients found that, overall, around 40% of patients engaged in self-injuring behaviors (Peebles, Wilson, & Lock, 2011). When they broke the data down, the researchers found that approximately 60% of patients with BN self-harmed, […]

After reading a news article about a young woman who died last year due to an eating disorder and laxative abuse, I thought that it was time I blogged on the subject. It’s not an easy subject to bring up, because it touches on several major subjects that are generally considered not polite for everyday […]

In the first two blog posts of this series, I’ve looked at how researchers define recovery, and how patients do so. Now, I want to look at what factors predict recovery in eating disorders. But first, a note. When I talk about things that predict a negative outcome, it’s possible that you might recognize some […]

Yesterday, I posted about how researchers define recovery in a variety of clinical situations. I think we have made a lot of progress in our understanding of what recovery is from a scientific perspective. Researchers are now embracing the idea that recovery involves much more than just regaining/maintaining weight and stopping ED behaviors. Certainly that’s […]

Lots of other mental health conditions commonly co-occur with eating disorders. I’ve blogged before about the links between OCD and EDs, and I’ve tangentially talked about links to depression and other anxiety disorders. But a paper published this week in the journal Psychopathology (von Lojewski, Fisher, & Abraham, 2013) reminded me that I haven’t yet […]

Thirty years ago this week, singer Karen Carpenter died as a result of anorexia nervosa. In the history of EDs, there aren’t a lot of historic moments. The first medical description of anorexia nervosa in the 1870s, perhaps, and the first formal description of bulimia in 1979, are likely candidates. But Carpenter’s death was a […]