Food presented in a virtual reality (VR) environment causes the same emotional responses as real food. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry compared the responses of people with anorexia and bulimia, and a control group, to the virtual and real-life snacks, suggesting that virtual food can be used for the evaluation and treatment of eating disorders. ...

Women with bulimia nervosa (BN), when compared with healthy women, showed different patterns of brain activity while doing a task that required self-regulation. This abnormality may underlie binge eating and other impulsive behaviors that occur with the eating disorder, according to an article published in the January 2009 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. ...

The American Psychiatric Association’s proposed diagnostic criteria for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) will include new recognition of binge eating disorder and minor changes in the criteria for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Other recommended changes acknowledge that some eating disorders identified as beginning in infancy and childhood may also ...

A national survey funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) tracks rates of common mental disorders among American youth. The results are part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a collaboration between NIMH and the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey conducted from 2001 to 2004 had 3,042 par ...