Harm minimization in severe and enduring anorexia nervosa

Abstract

For many sufferers of anorexia nervosa, the time course is long, and the prospect of disability and family burden great. This is all too often the case, even with early diagnosis and treatment. The term severe and enduring anorexia nervosa has been applied to these survivors. Yet, a majority of patients do eventually recover and, even where this is not the case, adaptive medical stability and function can be maintained despite alarming dilapidation. Managing the years of illness so as to have the best outcome physically and psychologically, even where full weight recovery does not occur, or has not yet occurred, is the topic of this article. Literature pertaining to harm minimization in chronic, severe, enduring, and long-standing anorexia nervosa was selectively reviewed using an Ovid data base and Google Scholar. The authors’ own clinical experience over almost four decades in public and private hospital and community settings has also informed much of what has been written. The authors would like to think that it is possible to do better than the familiar injunction (variously attributed to Hippocrates, Galen, and others) of ‘primum non nocere’—although this is a good place to start.