Eating Disorders in the Medical Setting

Abstract

The category of eating disorders comprises of a few different disorders that are vital for physicians and other providers in nonmental healthcare settings become familiar with, due to their high potential for morbidity and mortality. They present an interesting range of challenges in medical settings: anorexia nervosa (AN) is a disorder that should virtually never be treated in a primary care setting but instead referred out for specialty care, bulimia nervosa (BN) represents an illness that should typically be referred out for psychiatric pharmacotherapy but is possibly co-managed by primary care along with eating disorder therapy in some cases, and the proper care of binge-eating disorder (BED) can often be managed from the primary care setting by a knowledgeable provider. Proper recognition and diagnosis of these illnesses are covered in this chapter. In addition, guidelines on appropriate referral are given to ensure that your patients will be examined and treated appropriately. As these patients may have significant medical sequelae, advice on how to co-manage medical conditions and medical treatment along with psychiatric physicians and therapists is discussed. Information on proper pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy is presented so that medical providers can work alongside mental.