Anorexia nervosa and depression: a dissenting view.

The frequency of depressive symptoms in anorexic patients, the response of some anorexic patients to antidepressants or ECT, the occurrence of comparable physiologic abnormalities in major depression and anorexia nervosa, and family studies of incidence increasingly link depression and anorexia in the literature. A review of the problems in making this linkage shows that the possibility of anorexia nervosa as a depressive equivalent or a depressive spectrum disorder must be seriously questioned.