OUTCOME OF ANOREXIA-NERVOSA RELATED TO TREATMENT UTILIZING AN ADOLESCENT MEDICINE APPROACH

The scientific literature suggests that outcome for adolescents with e ating disorders bears little relation to the type of treatment used. P ractitioners of adolescent medicine care for adolescents with eating d isorders and have reported outcome in three studies, to which a fourth is added in this paper. This new sample of 34 adolescents represents consecutive admissions to an inpatient adolescent medicine unit who we re then followed as outpatients by the same interdisciplinary, treatme nt team. An average of more than 5 years after hospitalization, the gr oup had a mean weight of 97.9% of normal and 94% were menstruating (87 .5% regularly). Depending on the outcome criteria used, between one-ha lf and two-thirds of the subjects had art excellent to good outcome, w ith only about 10% of subjects symptomatic at follow-up. Comparing the most recent cohort of 34 adolescents (Group II) with the older cohort of 49 subjects (Group I) reveals a trend toward behaviors associated with bulimia more commonly on entering treatment. These encouraging re sults suggest that adolescent medicine may offer a complementary appro ach to traditional methods for adolescents with eating disorders.