Anxious high-achiever is typical personality mix for serious condition

RECENTLY a woman visited the surgery on behalf of her daughter and I’m glad she did.

The girl was reluctant to see me despite having the third most common chronic condition – after asthma and obesity – in adolescent girls.

I’m glad she did come in because it meant we could treat her anorexia nervosa and hopefully prevent the serious complications it can cause.

There are different theories as to why anorexia comes about, with genetics, personality and family environment probably all playing a part.

Rates are much higher in Western societies, however – perhaps partly because young girls are bombarded with unrealistically thin images of what a woman “should” look like.

Social media adds even more pressure to have the “perfect” image.

This girl had low self-esteem but was a highachiever, the classic personality mix of someone with this eating disorder.

She had lost a lot of weight recently, more than a stone inside three months.

She worried she was fat when clearly she was very thin, verging on dangerously so.

She’d avoided food so much she’d begun to develop starvation symptoms – depression, dizziness, feeling cold and poor concentration, yet despite this she said nothing was wrong.

I referred her to the local eating disorder team, where she would get support from specialist nurses, dieticians and psychologists.

Treatment for those with anorexia has improved, with most treated as outpatients.

Talking treatments help to tackle false beliefs about body size, as well as any emotional difficulties, and families are involved as much as possible to help get back in control of meals.

It’s still a very tough condition to treat – but five in 10 of those treated make a full recovery, with most of the others improving significantly.