Anorexia nervosa visited and revisited: weight is the issue

Anorexia nervosa is known as a psychiatric disorder. Many practitioners seem unaware that a patient in a starvation state is cognitively impaired and thus a poor candidate for psychotherapy. Weight restoration is a prerequisite to other treatment modalities. Many practitioners and all patients fail to recognize this illness because of a prevailing cultural idealization of thinness. Since these patients initially seem so compliant in treatment, valuable time is lost by those who fail to understand the patient's deceptiveness and the life-threatening potential of the disease.