Eating Disorders Flashcards
Continuum of Symptoms
- normal eating
- develop risk factors: low self esteem, dieting, media ideal bodies
- partial-syndrome ED: binge eating, serious dieting
- full-syndrome ED: increase in freq/severity of binge eating, purging, starvation
- treatment
Nursing Screening for ED
- Questions:
- Are you satisfied with your eating patterns?
- Do you ever eat in secret?
- BMI & nutritional appearance
- ->answers will help decide if further questioning/treatment is necessary - Assess diagnostic criteria for specific eating disorders
- Assess stage of change to determine how to intervene
Prevention
- Requires effort on the part of teachers, school nurses, parents, coaches and society as a whole
- Educate school nurses and teachers in elementary schools
- Emphasize protective factors that mediate between risk factors and the development of an eating disorder
Prevention: Protective Factors
- EDs considered very preventable
- McKnight Risk Factor Survey –> measures prevalence & degree of risk factors (other tools- See Boyd)
- Evidence Based resources (online: UCLA, NIMH, SAMHSA)
- Education of child, adolescent
- Screen for risk factors & assess for treatment
- Follow-up-Monitor for relapse
Protective Factors: Education for Parents
- Real vs. ideal weight
- Influence of attitudes, behaviors, teasing
- Ways to increase self-esteem
- Role of media: TV, magazines
- Signs & symptoms
- Interventions for obesity
- Boys at risk also
- Observe for food rituals
- Supervision of eating and exercise
Protective Factors: Education for Child
- Peer pressure re’ weight, eating
- Menses, puberty normal weight gain, obesity strategies
- Ways to improve self esteem
- Body image traps: media, retail clothing
- Adapting and coping with problems
- Reporting friends with signs of eating disorders
Continuum of Care
- Outpatient treatment- most treatment takes place outpatient
- Family assessment and intervention
- Emergency care
- Hospitalization (suicide risk, starving to death)
Criteria for Hospitalization
Medical-acute weight loss
- Slow Heart Rate- 40 beats per minute (normal 60-80) & other arrhythmias
- Dehydration
- Temp less 36.1 C
- Blood pressure less than 80/50
- Hypokalemia (low potassium, affects heart)
- Hypo-magnesium (low magnesium)
- Poor motivation, failure on outpatient basis
- Risk for suicide (1/2 of fatalities from anorexia), severe depression
Diagnostic Criteria: Anorexia Nervosa
- Refusal to maintain normal body weight
- Intense fear of gaining weight
- Disturbance in body image & self evaluation based on body weight to an extreme
- Perfectionism & does not recognize seriousness
- Severity Rating-BMI-less than or equal to Kg/m2
- –Mild- 17
- –Moderate- 16-16.99
- –Severe- 15- 15.99
Two types of Anorexia
–> must have symptoms for over 3 months
- Restricting type: rigid dieting, fasting, excessive exercise
- Binging/Purging type: eating excess food all at once followed by purging by vomiting laxatives, diuretics or enemas (diff from bulimia b/c low BMI)
Clinical Course of Anorexia Nervosa
- Onset in early adolescence
- Chronic condition with relapses characterized by significant weight loss
- Often continue to be obsessed with food
- Many go on to develop bulimia nervosa
- Poor outcome w/initial lower minimum weight, presence of purging, and later age of onset
- May look depressed, but that may be secondary to starvation
Harmful Effects of Anorexia
- depression/suicide
- hair loss
- thyroid hormone decreases
- low WBC count
- heart failure/death
- rough scaly
- organs deteriorate
- muscles waste away
- hands swell
- period stops
- constipation
- bone loss
- body fat layer gone
How much larger do anorexics view their bodies than normal?
20% larger
Body image: anorexia
discrepancy between self-perception and others
Drive for thinness: anorexia
an intense physical and emotional process that overrides all physiologic body cues, such as hunger and weakness
Interoceptive awareness: anorexia
sensory response to emotional and visceral cues, such as feeling hunger & defining and understanding their feelings
Epidemiology
- 0.5 to 1% lifetime prevalence
- Onset is typically between 14 and 16 years
- Female-to-male ratio 10:1
- Familial predisposition
- Co-morbid with depression and anxiety disorders
- Hispanics & whites more common-culturally defined weight expectations (underlined same in bulimia)
- Genetic heritability-50-80%
Men/Boys w/ED
- Later onset around 20 years old
- Athletes in a sport where weight is an issue –> may want thinness and muscle
- Thinner males have less testosterone
- Community samples have much higher rates than reported in clinical samples indicating under-diagnosis
- Risk factors & comorbid conditions similar to women
Interdisciplinary Treatment: Goals
- Initiating nutritional rehabilitation
- Resolving conflicts around body image disturbance
- Increasing effective coping
- Addressing underlying conflicts
- Assisting family with healthy functioning
- Hospitalization usually necessary
- Intensive therapies-supervision of patient and frequency of contact
Interdisciplinary Treatment: Antidepressant
- Fluoxetine (Prozac): helps with depression, obsessive compulsive & perfectionism symptoms
- ->FDA approved antidepressant, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, (SSRI)-for anorexia and bulimia
- Adult dose for eating disorders usually 40-60 mg/day. Take 2X daily if over 20 mg/day.
- May take up to 4 weeks for full antidepressant effects, may increase after a few weeks if needed.
- ->Boxed warning: increased risk suicidal thoughts & behaviors in children, adolescents & young adults.
- May cause dizziness or drowsiness avoid driving
- Small frequent meals if causes nausea & vomiting
- Avoid taking while breastfeeding & pregnant
Anorexia Priority Care Issues
- Mortality rate 7-10%
- Long duration of illness
- Binging and purging
- Co-morbid illnesses
- –Substance abuse
- –Depression (suicide using highly lethal means)
- –Anxiety disorders
Anorexia Nursing Assessment
Evaluation of body and social systems:
- School attendance
- Family interaction
- Careful history (patient and family interactions)
Determine BMI
Body distortion:
-Fear of weight gain
Unrealistic expectations and thinking
Ritualistic behaviors
Difficulty expressing negative feelings
Inability to experience visceral cues and emotions
Suicide ideation-50% of deaths are suicide
Family Assessment:
- Enmeshment-low autonomy
- Overprotective
- Rigid
- Unrealistic attitudes towards weight & appearance with teasing and criticism