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Eating Disorders

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Psychopathology in Women

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Abstract

Eating disorders are highly important and affect women more frequently. This is because of their clinical severity, comorbidities and increasing prevalence as well as their social repercussions. It is impossible to deny that eating disorders are multidetermined conditions. Most of those who treat or research them are reconciled to the need to approach them broadly and flexibly. Implicating genetic factors in a disorder like anorexia or bulimia nervosa is sensitive, and the potential for misunderstanding and misuse of gender theoretical concepts is very real. Psychiatry has a long, unfortunate history of misconstructing and pathologising female behaviour. Only recently there has been broader theoretical appreciation of the power of gender differences in self-development and the adverse effects of stereotyping children too rigidly by sex or gender. The objective is to highlight a multidimensional model for the explanation of eating disorders. However, this tends to omit the crucial dimension of culture, which includes the gender perspective.

Chewing on something that felt so real, but couldn’t have been, it couldn’t. My face, the look in my eyes… my face, undoubtedly, but never seen before. Or no, not mine, but so familiar… nothing makes sense. Familiar and yet not… that vivid, strange, horribly uncanny feeling.

Han Kang, The Vegetarian

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Leioa, Spain

    Margarita Sáenz-Herrero

  2. Cruces University Hospital, Barakaldo, Spain

    Margarita Sáenz-Herrero, Sara Fuertes-Soriano & Mayte López-Atanes

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  1. Margarita Sáenz-Herrero
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  2. Sara Fuertes-Soriano
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Correspondence to Margarita Sáenz-Herrero .

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  1. Cruces University Hospital, University of the Basque Country, Barakaldo, Vizcaya, Spain

    Margarita Sáenz-Herrero

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Sáenz-Herrero, M., Fuertes-Soriano, S., López-Atanes, M. (2019). Eating Disorders. In: Sáenz-Herrero, M. (eds) Psychopathology in Women. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15179-9_14

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