Review of eating disorders in children and adolescents
I was pleased to see that Simon Gowers and Rachel Bryant-Waugh have recently published a comprehensive review of child and adolescent eating disorders. Both have extensive experience in the area and have recently been involved in developing the NICE guidelines for eating disorders.
The article covers the evidence base for physical and psychological approaches to treating eating disorders in 8-18 year olds. Due to the paucity of evidence in this age group, the authors also include some careful extrapolation from the adult literature. Finally, they suggest some important areas for future research:
(1) Controlled trials of psychological treatments in anorexia nervosa
(2) Application of evidence based approaches in bulimia in adolescents
(3) Research into different service models (addressing questions such as whether inpatient treatment is better than day or outpatient treatment and whether specialist ED services are better than more generic services).
The full reference is:
Gowers, S.; Bryant-Waugh, R. (2004) Management of child and adolescent eating disorders: the current evidence base and future directions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, Vol 45; Number 1; pp. 63-83. The abstract is available free from Blackwell-Synergy. You can also get full text access for a fee (or free if you have an institutional subscription).
Leave a comment