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Outcome, psychosocial functioning, and prognostic factors in adolescent anorexia nervosa as determined by prospective follow-up assessment

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Abstract

The aim of this prospective longitudinal study was to examine outcome, psychosocial functioning, and prognostic factors in adolescent anorexia nervosa. Thirty-four (88%) out of a consecutive series of 39 inpatients were reinvestigated three and seven years after discharge. The patients and 34 controls matched for age, sex, and occupational status were interviewed using structured interviews on their Diagnostic Statistical Manual, third edition, revised (DSM-III-R) eating disorder diagnoses, specific eating disorder psychopathology, comorbid psychiatric disorders, and psychosocial functioning. At the seven-year follow-up 15 patients (44%) still fulfilled DSM-III-R criteria for some form of eating disorder diagnosis, 21 (62%) for some other psychiatric diagnosis. Patients with a poor outcome showed significantly more problems in most areas of psychosocial functioning than the good-outcome group, but even recovered anorectic patients had more psychosexual difficulties than healthy controls. From a large range of potential prognostic factors, only low body weight at intake and low minimum weight during course of illness proved to be of predictive value.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Philipps University, Hans-Sachs-Str. 6, D-35039, Marburg

    B. Herpertz-Dahlmann (Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry), K. Hennighausen & H. Remschmidt (Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Head of the Department)

  2. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Julius-Maximilians University, Würzburg, Germany

    C. Wewetzer (Research Fellow)

Authors
  1. B. Herpertz-Dahlmann
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  2. C. Wewetzer
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  3. K. Hennighausen
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  4. H. Remschmidt
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Additional information

Received M.D. from Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Bonn. Major research interests are childhood and adolescent eating disorders including links to affective disorders.

Received M.D. from Philipps University. His current interests include follow-up studies of adolescent eating disorders.

Received M.D. from Philipps University. His interests are body image disturbances in eating disorders and research in neurophysiology and neuropsychology.

Received M.D. from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany, and Ph.D. from Rupprecht-Karls University, Tübingen. Current research interests are eating disorders, affective disorders, and early onset schizophrenia.

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Herpertz-Dahlmann, B., Wewetzer, C., Hennighausen, K. et al. Outcome, psychosocial functioning, and prognostic factors in adolescent anorexia nervosa as determined by prospective follow-up assessment. J Youth Adolescence 25, 455–471 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01537542

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01537542

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