Comprehensive Care Center for Eating Disorders

Anorexia Nervosa is the inability to maintain body weight at or above minimally normal weight for age and height. The disease affects about 1% of adolescent and young adult females and approximately one tenth as many males as females. Those with anorexia nervosa aged 15 to 24 years old are 12 times more likely to die than their peers without an eating disorder.

Individuals with anorexia nervosa have an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat. Patients may try to control body weight through reduced food intake, excessive exercise, and/or other means to rid the body of calories, such as vomiting behavior. As a result of the malnutrition that occurs, every organ system in the body can be affected. Among the most serious concerns are the function of the brain, the heart and the reproductive system.

Females often lose their menstrual periods, sometimes even before losing significant amounts of weight.

Diagnostic Criteria for Anorexia Nervosa

The following criteria are established by the American Psychiatric Association and published in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV).

1. Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height (e.g. weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight less than 85% of that expected)

2. Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat even though underweight

3. Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight

4. Post-menarcheal females, amenorrhea i.e. absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles

Subtype:

Restricting Type: During the current episode of anorexia nervosa the person has not regularly engaged in binge eating or purging behavior (i.e. self-induced vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics or enemas).

Binge Eating/Purging Type: During the current episode of anorexia nervosa the person has regularly engaged in binge eating or purging behavior