Overview
Eating disorders are patterns of eating and/or eliminating calories (purging) that contribute to negative health consequences. Most often, eating disorders are characterized by dissatisfaction and obsessive preoccupation with weight, body size, and shape (body image). Sometimes individuals who struggle with eating disorders develop distortions in the way that they perceive their bodies.
Symptoms
The most common eating disorders are divided into three categories:
- Anorexia Nervosa typically involves restrictive eating behaviors resulting in significant weight loss caused by an intense fear about weight gain. Individuals have the inability to maintain weight at a minimally normal weight for age, height, and body type. Some individuals employ binging and purging behaviors to decrease or maintain minimal weight.
- Bulimia Nervosa is characterized by binging and purging behavior. Binging is defined by rapidly eating large quantities of food, often accompanied with feeling a lack of control. Purging includes vomiting, excessive exercising, laxative use, and similar methods directed toward eliminating calories to compensate for binges.
- Binge Eating Disorder includes recurrent episodes of binge eating that are not followed by any compensatory behaviors/purging to prevent weight gain. There is often a sense of lacking control. Binging episodes are not correlated with hunger or satiety. Often binges occur while alone, and include feelings of guilt and shame.
Some individuals struggle with symptoms that don't precisely fit into the above categories or combine categorical characteristics, but still imply similar health risks and impaired functioning and/or distress. Other people may engage in disordered eating that may not meet the threshold for diagnoses, but contribute to health problems and other disturbances, or establish vulnerability for an emerging eating disorder. Sometimes individuals who struggle with eating disorders fluctuate in the behaviors they engage in, and may vary across time in the diagnosis that is appropriate.
Common symptoms include:
- Malnutrition
- Dangerously low weight
- Weight gain
- Compromised bone density and increased risk of bone fracture
- Compromised heart function
- Impaired cognitive functioning
- Loss of period/compromised reproductive health
- Anemia/fatigue
- Electrolyte imbalances (increased risk for heart problems)
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Tooth decay
- Dehydration
- Constipation
- Diarrhea
Treatment
The appropriate level of care for eating disorder treatment is important to consider.
- Hospitalization helps individuals become medically stable and monitors the risk of refeeding syndrome, a dangerous and potentially fatal response to weight gain following periods of malnutrition and low weight.
- Residential treatment helps monitor, structure, and support others to abstain from symptoms and/or facilitate the process of weight gain.
- Partial and intensive outpatient levels of care offer structure and support that are less intensive than residential treatment but more involved than outpatient care, and may be helpful as a step down from higher levels of care. At the outpatient level of care, it is important that the treatment team (usually a therapist, dietician, prescriber, and medical provider) are in communication with each other and understand the role of each professional.
- CAPS coordinate care with psychiatric, medical, and dietary professionals at the Student Health and Wellness Center to offer collaborative treatment to students who are appropriate for outpatient level of treatment.
Resources
Below are resources you can use now to get needed help.
Workbooks:
- Overcoming your eating disorder: a cognitive-behavioral treatment for bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder
- Overcoming binge eating: the proven program to learn why you binge and how you can stop
- The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia