Eating disorders
Executive Editor, InnovAiT
E-mail: chantal.simon{at}oxfordjournals.org
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Abstract |
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Although classification of eating disorders is relatively recent, cases of female anorexia have been recorded since the eleventh century. Then, the intentional self-starvation of women was thought to result from religious yearnings resulting in these women being termed ‘fasting saints’. Freud recorded a case of bulimia nervosa in a female patient in the nineteenth century. There are currently three recognized eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Many more people have disordered eating patterns that show features of these conditions but do not meet the criteria for diagnosis.