Eating disorders and psychosis

Comorbidity of anxiety and mood disorders were much more studied than comorbidity of psychosis in the eating disorders and findings on this issue largely limited to case series. However, studies demonstrated that the incidence of schizophrenia is 0.8-1.2% in the general population, while in the patients with eating disorders is 3-10%. Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders reported that 3-fold increase in restrictive type anorexia and 2- fold increase in binging-purging type anorexia compared to bulimia nervosa. The minority of patients exhibit the presence of a clearly psychosis with delusions and hallucinations in eating disorders. However anorexia nervosa more close to psychosis than other eating disorders with a much larger parts of the patients exhibit clear and intense denial of the disease, withdrawal of relations, restricted affect, rigidity of thought and obsessionality, paranoid thoughts, distorted perception of the body ranging from sub-delusion to delusion. And this feature of disorder constitutes the main challenges in the treatment. [Anadolu Psikiyatri Derg 2014; 15(1.000): 84-88]