Handbook of Eating Disorders and Obesity - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471230731 ISBN 13: 9780471230731

Publisher: Wiley, 2003

Synopsis

Up-to-date coverage on the assessment and treatment of eating disorders and obesity
Featuring contributions from an international group of experts, the Handbook of Eating Disorders and Obesity is a broad-based resource that explores the major classifications of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. This groundbreaking reference also offers a thorough review of the area of obesity, along with a specialized focus on body image disturbances, including body dysmorphic disorder.
This comprehensive handbook presents the latest information in multiple areas of research and practice, highlighting risk factors, assessment, treatment, and prevention of eating disorders and obesity. Practical guidelines for implementing treatment strategies are supplemented with insightful clinical case studies and helpful explanations illustrating real-world applications of treatment components.
Special coverage in this volume addresses such timely topics as:
* Cosmetic surgery and cosmetic medical treatments
* How the media influences eating disorders
* Weight and shape concerns of boys and men
* Cross-cultural aspects of eating disorders
* Child sexual abuse and eating disorders
* A feminist approach to eating disorders
The Handbook of Eating Disorders and Obesity offers mental health and medical professionals, as well as students, the most current information available on every aspect of this troubling and pervasive societal problem.
"This remarkably comprehensive and current resource will be an indispensable addition to the libraries of clinicians and scholars alike. The chapters represent a rich synthesis of the wide-ranging psychosocial and biological investigations of obesity and eating disorders, and the equally diverse approaches to their clinical management."
-Michael Strober, PhD, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Editor in Chief, International Journal of Eating Disorders
"This impressive handbook offers, in one volume, a fine distillation of contemporary knowledge and best practice in the complex and interrelated areas of body image disturbance, eating disorders, and obesity. The explicit integration of current research with current clinical practice makes this volume stand out and will ensure its place as an indispensable resource for both those wishing to get up to speed and for established researchers and clinicians alike."
-Marika Tiggemann, PhD, Flinders University, Australia
Associate Editor, Body Image: An International Journal of Research

About this title

About the Author

J. KEVIN THOMPSON, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida. He is the editor or coeditor of several books, including Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Obesity in Youth and Exacting Beauty: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment of Body Image Disturbance. He is also Associate Editor of the journal Body Image: An International Journal of Research.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

A handbook that is intended to cover clinical research and practice in the area of eating disorders and obesity should be representative of the field, provide critical guidance, and be accessible to the nonspecialist. According to these criteria, this handbook succeeds. It accurately portrays progress and problems. In the chapters that involve science -- such as genetics, the epidemiology of risk factors, diagnosis, and therapeutic outcomes -- the writing is clear and critical. In the chapters in which science is thin or nonexistent, the authors acknowledge that fact while advocating various therapies (e.g., interpersonal, cognitive and dialectical-behavioral, family, feminist, and pharmacologic), an increased awareness of cultural differences, the need to combat the "toxic environment" of fast foods, the importance of childhood sexual abuse, the psychological and economic issues related to cosmetic surgery, and the role of the media in shaping the perception of desirable bodies. Four of the 35 chapters concern disturbances in body image and body dysmorphic disorder. The discussions in these chapters are based on the plausible idea that dissatisfaction with one's body is a predictor of eating disturbances and that "internalization of the thin ideal [mediates] between sociocultural pressures and body dissatisfaction." Given that most, if not all, adolescents have some complaint about their bodies, research must identify the specific links among body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and obesity. Research should also clarify why so many of those who are dissatisfied with their bodies and live among media-generated fantasies of thinness, "fat talk," and fast foods do not have anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or severe obesity. The factors that protect young people from these disorders may be the most useful source of new information for the development and implementation of effective preventive measures. Three chapters discuss eating disorders and obesity in childhood and adolescence. The large increase in childhood obesity in the past decade is ominous, and so is the lack of a robust research effort in this area. It is a truism of public health that the earlier detection and intervention occur, the bigger the payoff for the afflicted person in terms of personal satisfaction, social function, and physical health. The savings in costs of health care and increased economic productivity are much larger than any that can be gained by intervention in the case of adults. A final point: this handbook reflects the field's baffling failure to use test meals to understand the disorders of eating. One of 750 pages of text mentions test meals, cites a statement from 1990 that test meals are "the quintessence of behavioral assessment of eating disorders," and then notes that "test meals do not appear to be used widely as an assessment tool." This is like being interested in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders without measuring sleep. A reader could not learn from this handbook that test meals had been measured under laboratory conditions in research involving people with eating disorders or obesity. Given that test meals are an unambiguous, quantitative, and defining phenotype and are a proven bridge for translation between the clinic and animal models, the resistance to their use requires analysis. Gerard P. Smith, M.D.
Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0471230731
• ISBN 13: 9780471230731
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 796
• Editor: Thompson J. Kevin