Word: patient
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When an anorexic enters the hospital, before any psychiatric treatment begins, doctors work to bring her out of physical danger. Then, some sort of longer-term treatment begins, to combat the patient's will to starve and to induce voluntary eating. Dr. Robert Masland of Children's Hospital says, "Most people like food too much, so they cannot stay on a starvation diet; anorexics can. All the patients who come in want to weigh 100 pounds. We're dealing with patients with a stubborn streak and strong will-power. In behavior modification we say, "If you're not good...
Family life plays the greatest role in Bruch's theory of who gets anorexia and why. "It is possible," she writes, "that the success, achievement, and appearance orientation of these families is in some way related to the patient's driving search for something that will earn him respect." Despite the apparent stability in the anorexic's home--very few come from broken homes--Bruch finds in the parents a deep disillusionment with each other. They are competing secretly to prove which is the better parent. The mother is likely to be an achievement-oriented woman, frustrated in her aspirations...
...Mass General Hospital, insulin injections are used to stimulate an appetite in anorexics. Dr. George Tully, an endocrinologist explains, "the insulin induces hypoglycemia. This makes the patient feel hungry and gives them a sweaty, mild headache which only eating can relieve." Ideally, a normal appetite will develop in the patient and she will not just eat to avoid the insulin's side effects. The insulin treatment is accompanied by psychiatric care...
...Peter Sifneos, a psychiatrist at Beth Israel Hospital, describes a German treatment for anorexics as "most upsetting to many people, but it has the best results in pounds per weight. The Germans force the patient to stay in bed twenty-four hours a day and don't allow parents or any others to visit. During rounds the whole team--professors, residents, interns and nurses--all give the patient a Germanic lecture on wasting time, being undeserving and taking another person's bedspace, and they tube-feed the patient, through the nose and down to the stomach. As soon...
Tully says that "the success of behavior modification in restoring and maintaining a satisfactory appetite in anorexics depends on the age of the patient and if you can work out the underlying stress." Doctors agree that the older the patient at the onset of anorexia, the lower the chance of success with any kind of treatment. The mortality rate can be as high as 50 per cent in older patients...