Undetected Autism in Women Manifests as Anorexia Nervosa

[Guest guest]

http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/research-undetected-autism-in-women-manife\

sts-as-anorexia-nervosa

Undetected Autism in Women Manifests as Anorexia Nervosa

By News-Medical.Net - 22 Hours Ago

According to a leading expert, severe cases of anorexia may be the result of

undetected autism in women.

Professor Gillberg, of the University of Strathclyde, says that

autism, characterised by defects in communication and social interaction, also

makes many anorexic patients unresponsive to traditional treatments and may be

responsible for anorexia's low recovery rates.

Professor Gillberg believes that although autism is thought to be predominately

a male problem, affecting up to four times more boys than girls, the disorder

has been overlooked in women because their autistic traits present themselves

differently.

For example an obsession with counting calories may be an outward sign of

autism.

He says their research has shown that a small but important minority of all

teenage girls, with anorexia nervosa in the general population, meet the

diagnostic criteria for autistic disorder, Asperger syndrome or atypical autism.

He has apparently seen quite a number of cases where the anorexia has become

completely entrenched because people have not understood that underlying the

eating disorder is autism.

Professor Gillberg says anorexic patients with autism tend to be severe cases

because traditional treatment for eating disorders proved ineffective.

A good example is family therapy, a popular psychotherapy in which family

members discuss eating with the sufferer which is all but useless for autistic

patients.

People with an autism spectrum disorder have great difficulty even understanding

basic concepts about other people's thoughts and feelings, which means that

anything said in a family-therapy session is likely to be misconstrued by the

affected individual who will not grasp what is going on in that particular

context.

They need far more concrete, one-to-one interventions.

A spokesman for the Eating Disorder Association welcomed the research and said

it could help develop more effective treatments for eating disorders.

About 5 per cent of anorexic patients die from complications of the disorder and

only 40 per cent make a full recovery.

Ten per cent of the 1.1 million reported anorexia cases in the UK are in men,

and Professor Gillberg says autism is behind the majority of male anorexia

cases.

He says his clinical impression over the past 30 years has been that males

struck by anorexia nervosa very often have autism spectrum disorders.

Judith Gould, director of the National Autistic Society's Diagnostic Centre,

agrees with the study's findings, and feels autism in girls is being missed

because it often manifests itself in females in different ways.

She agrees that anorexia, which is predominantly diagnosed in girls, could be

linked to autism in an unknown proportion of cases.

About 500,000 people in the UK are thought to have some form of autism.