Eating disorders in some patients may not fulfill all the criteria for
anorexia nervosa or bulimia. For example, patients may have lost less
than 15% of body weight or have fewer than two binge-purge episodes per
week for 3 months, but have other typical, albeit milder, features of
the disorders. These are called atypical eating disorders. Binge-eating
disorders (binges with no compensation) is a common "atypical" eating
disorder.
Eating disorders can be manifestations or secondary complications of
other medical and psychiatric conditions. For example, major depressive
illness frequently causes substantial weight loss. Schizophrenia may lead
to weight loss in individuals deluded by suspicions of poisoned food.
Patients with dementia syndromes such as Alzheimer's disease have progressive
cognitive incapacity that may prevent them from eating enough. Patients
with panic disorder who develop social phobias about eating or vomiting
in public may avoid food.
A number of medical conditions cause weight loss, including a few in
which patients actually increase their caloric intake, e.g., hyperthyroidism,
insulin-dependent (type I) diabetes mellitus, malabsorption, tuberculosis,
and intestinal parasites. Tumors of the hypothalamus can cause appetite
to decrease or increase. Decreased consciousness, cocaine or amphetamine
abuse, and many drugs can all cause people to lose weight. But in contrast
to patients with anorexia nervosa, people with weight disorders caused
by these other conditions usually perceive themselves to be too thin and
manifest no phobic fear of fatness.
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