부산대학교 도서관

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder often highly resistant to treatment, characterised by restrictive eating and/or compensatory behaviours such as purging or excessive exercising, leading to low body weight and dysregulated appetite. The recovery rate is low for those with AN in standard treatment, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), enhanced-CBT, and anti-depressant medication, and risk of relapse is high (Muratore, Attia, 2021; Monteleone et al., 2022; Dalle Grave et al., 2023) estimated at around an annual global rate of 50% (Steinhausen, 2002, Frostad et al., 2022). Moreover, longitudinal studies show that for those with over twenty years lived experience of AN, recovery rate is only 40–63% (Eddy et al., 2017, Fichter et al., 2017). And for the last five years in the UK (2017–2022), an alarming 84% rise in AN admissions to the National Health Service was reported (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2022), a rise echoed around the world, especially in high-income countries (Zipfel et al., 2022). Given this alarming rise, some clinicians are dividing opinion by suggesting palliative care and medically assisted death for treatment resistant AN (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2023). Considering the dangerous nature of AN and heightened risk of death, new approaches are urgently needed to examine novel neurobiological mechanisms maintaining the disorder that may improve global treatment resistance.