Eating disorder cutoffs miss some of sickest patients, study finds

The news wires and blogs are hot with this one:

Eating disorder cutoffs miss some of sickest patients, study finds

My favorite quote:
"diagnostic criteria were developed by expert consensus, without the benefit of studies to track patients' health"

In other words, not based on data or research or science. And it MATTERS.

I am against the use of arbitrary weight targets to measure a mental illness. I think eating disorders need to be diagnosed by the thoughts and compulsions, not by their physical damage or severity. The whole ED-NOS concept needs to be scrapped. It causes support to be withdrawn just when treatment is beginning to be successful, allows insurance companies to withdraw funding, treats patients as if they don't deserve care and help unless they are in medical crisis, and misses the point that the anguish and difficulty isn't about the weight and behaviors: it is mental.

The diagnosis may change when you gain weight, or stop missing periods, or purge more or less but it isn't a different illness. It is still the same illness and needs to have the same name and treatment plan.

Comments

  1. "The diagnosis may change when you gain weight, or stop missing periods, or purge more or less but it isn't a different illness. It is still the same illness and needs to have the same name and treatment plan"
    I agree wholeheartedly. My daughter actually prefers the diagnosis of EDNOS to that of AN which isn't technically accurate any more - and that's OK because insurance or medical cover doesn't ride on it. Shouldn't having an "eating disorder" be considered serious enough to warrant treatment and support whatever the specific disorder may be

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  2. heres how naive/uninformed/ignorant i was at the beginning....i wanted it to be EDNOS so daughter would not be labelled with AN. I thought it would be better since i kinda heard/read somewhere that AN/Bulimia were never covered by insurance. Figured EDNOS meant she had some sort of problem eating but not a "real" E.D. and we could get around that label in her file. Unfortunately, since d is truly AN, I have learned a lot in the past year and half.

    It should just be one dx..eating disorder...in terms of insurance and then treatments vary depending on symptoms/behaviors.

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  3. It is great to see someone who cares so much and who establishes that it is a mental disorder too and not just about vanity or the media and social desire to be skinny.
    I don't desire to be 'skinny' but I just can't be satisfied with how I look.
    I'm fairly new to blogging and I feel so much better now that I'm starting to find an online support base.

    I hope things will start to get better

    Gecko x
    http://starvingfull.blogspot.com

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  4. Well said. I always marveled at the fact that my eating disorder, a psychiatric illness, had physical criteria. Even when I gained the weight I needed to my thoughts were as sick as ever. Yet I felt that I shouldn't be in therapy anymore, that I didn't deserve it anymore, because my body didn't look anorexic or meet the criteria for the disease.

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