The British Journal of Psychiatry (2001) 178: 388
© 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence (2nd edn)
Simon G. Gowers, Professor of Adolescent Psychiatry
University of Liverpool, Pine Lodge Academic Unit, 79 Liverpool Road,
Chester CH2 IAW
EDITED BY SIDNEY CROWN and ALAN LEE
Edited by Bryan Lask & Rachel Bryant-Waugh. Hove: Psychology Press.
1999. 382 pp. £30.00 (hb). ISBN 0 86377 803 8
When eating disorders present in adulthood, the therapeutic task of
uncovering and understanding the original aetiological variables is hampered
by the development of secondary handicaps and the subject's position within
the sick role. Often individual family experiential factors stem from
adolescence, but time may have clouded their original meaning. Attention to
early-onset cases therefore affords greater opportunity to understand the
contribution of the various aetiological factors that lead to fears about
weight and loss of control and the motives behind characteristic behaviours.
In addition, such study offers opportunity for primary and secondary
prevention.
The first edition of this book was based largely on the editors' own
clinical and research experience at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and
it became a leading resource in this area. The second edition, after a gap of
about 6 years, has been fully revised. Many chapters have been completely
rewritten and the result is a more comprehensive, evidence-based book, drawing
on and distilling much of the published literature in this area from the past
10 years.
Like the previous edition, the book has a multi-disciplinary authorship
reflecting the importance of the contributions of, for example, nursing,
medicine, psychology and dietetics to the management of disorders that bridge
physical and psychological medicine. In an area in which the dynamic between
clinicians, patients and families is so crucial to success and in which users
are not always positive about their treatment experience, attention to these
relationships is particularly welcome and the contributions from a patient and
parent about their experiences are very pertinent. The law regarding consent
to treatment and the ethical issues around confidentiality and parental
responsibility provide immense challenges, and the chapter on this subject is
particularly welcome.
The revised edition is an excellent book, which is free from jargon and
which will be an invaluable resource for all disciplines working with children
and young people with eating disorders.
