Addictive eating disorders.

Addictive eating disorders have been a part of history and have only recently been recognized as psychiatric disorders. Increased publicity has enabled family and friends of eating disordered individuals to recognize the disease and seek help for them from trained medical professionals. Everyone is "at risk," but certain subpopulations have been "coming out of the closet" in epidemic proportions. An ever-increasing number of high school-aged and college-aged females have developed some form of eating disorder, from fad diets to self-induced vomiting. In these individuals, the obsession with thinness takes priority over family, friends, schoolwork, or career. Strangely enough, the eating disordered person's addiction is not to food but to the feeling of numbness her behavior brings. Over time, the need to control is desperately sought and many patients transfer their obsession to other patterns of self-abuse. Nursing intervention should include setting the appropriate example in terms of the professional's relationship with food, while providing much needed emotional support. An innovative method of intervention available to nursing professionals includes the use of creative, visual imagery to repeatedly diffuse fear and anxiety about food until a level of personal autonomy over the disorder and other emotional concerns is achieved. Therefore, a system of recovery can be designed for the anorectic or bulimic patient and the experience of recovery from the eating disorder can be a lifelong process of personal growth.