Re-posted from Cleveland Center for Eating Disorders (CCED) blog archives. CCED and The Emily Program partnered in 2014.
By Dr. Mark Warren
One of the most exciting books to recently be published on eating disorders is the book Eating Disorders and the Brain by Drs Bryan Lask and Ian Frampton. A review of the book was recently published by Dr. Joel Yager, a prominent psychiatrist in the eating disorder field. Dr. Yager describes 2 parts of the book which I thought to be extraordinarily important. The first is an early chapter in the book by David Wood on why clinicians should love and appreciate neuroscience. This discussion, which focuses on free will, determinism, how the presentation of an eating disorder makes one think about philosophical, clinical, and medical issues is critically important. This chapter also discusses past assumptions and questions around the origins of eating disorders including genes, attachment theory, cultural theories, social adversity, family issues, maturation, issues of neural networks and how all of these issues can be seen not as etiologic factors but as factors that must be considered while treating these complex disorders. By moving beyond etiology into understanding complexity, he makes a tremendous contribution to the conceptualization of these illnesses.