Pica
Eating disorders
An eating disorder is when a person develops an unhealthy attitude towards food.
Food can be one of the main ways people deal with stress, sadness, anxiety or happiness. Using food as a way of dealing with emotions creates a complicated relationship which can impact mental health, causing at its most extreme an eating disorder.
Eating disorders manifest as a disturbance in the way someone perceives their body, this may not always be the correct perception of how they actually look.
There are some specific eating disorders, each has different symptoms and treatments, including:
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Bulimia
- Binge Eating Disorder
- Others
- Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder (OSFED) - previously known as 'eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS)'. A diagnosis of OSFED means that the person does have an eating disorder but that they don’t meet all of the criteria for a diagnosis of anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder.
- Rumination Disorder is an illness that involves repetitive, habitual bringing up of food that might be partly digested.
- **Pica** this disorder involves eating things that have no nutritional value.
- Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) - this is the restriction of food by eating smaller portions or avoiding certain types of food, because of things like temperature, smell or texture.
- Diabulimia this is when people who suffer from type 1 diabetes restrict their insulin to control their weight.
| Bulimia Nervosa |
Anorexia nervosa |
| • Salivary gland hypertrophy |
|
| • Dental decay |
|
| • Calloused knuckles due to repeated vomiting |
|
| • Amenorrhoea |
|
| • Normal weight or overweight |
|
| • Purging after bringe eating of large amount of food |
|
| • Too concern on body weight and apperance |
|
| • Heart failure , damage to esophagus |
• Amenorrhoea is diagnostic features Oligomenorrhoea |
| • Eat little |
|
| • Underweight but still assume overweight |
|
| • Dangerously thin |
|
| • Nutrition deficiency , infertility |
|
Most important risk factor for both AN and BN - Hx of childhood sexual abuse!
Anorexia nervosa
- most commonly occur in adolescent girls from affluent families with perfectionist personalities
- Obsessive pursuit of thinness through dieting with extreme weight loss and disturbance of body image with high mortality rate of 18%
- Highest mortality and suicidal rate of any psychiatric disorder
- Restriction of energy intake relative to requirement
- Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, despite current underweight status