Eating disorders

Résumé

Eating disorders are highly important and affect women more frequently than men. This is because of their clinical severity, comorbidities, and increasing prevalence, as well as their social repercussions. It is impossible to deny that eating disorders are multidetermined conditions. Most of those who treat or research them are reconciled to the need to approach them broadly and flexibly. Implicating genetic factors in a disorder such as anorexia or bulimia nervosa is sensitive and the potential for misunderstanding and misusing gender theoretical concepts is very real. Psychiatry has a long, unfortunate history of misconstructing and pathologizing female behavior. Only recently has there been broader theoretical appreciation of the power of gender differences in self-development and the adverse effects of stereotyping children too rigidly by sex or gender. This is our objective in this chapter. Clinicians have made an effort to create a multidimensional model for the explanation of eating disorders. However, this tends to omit the crucial dimension of culture, which includes the gender perspective.