Counseling Patients With Bulimia Nervosa

This chapter is designed to provide an introduction to the basic principles of counseling outpatients with bulimia nervosa who are being seen in a general medical setting. A summary of these principles and chapter outline is presented in Table 1. The purpose is not to make psychiatrists or counselors out of family physicians or other generalists, but rather to improve patient care and to briefly review some basic principles that can be useful in an office setting when working with these patients. Emphasis is placed on a few issues that may significantly increase the likelihood that cases of bulimia nervosa will be detected and that individuals with bulimia nervosa will become engaged in treatment and will take the first steps in the process of recovering from this disorder. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.