The Reality of Medications and Eating Disorder Recovery

A conversation I recently had with the editor of an eating disorder content website highlighted a fallacy about medications and treatment. The editor spoke about how hard it is to find an in-depth, definitive article regarding all different types of psychiatric medications and eating disorder treatment. His concern reflected a deep misunderstanding of the role psychopharmacology in recovery.

The research into medications and eating disorders is extremely limited. The only illness researched with any depth is anorexia but with very disappointing results. No medications have shown to be effective for this disorder.

As I wrote in the last post, a few medications have shown some benefit for binge eating disorder, but even those articles have very few subjects and are of limited utility.

Medications are primarily of value when treating other psychiatric illnesses that are primary, in other words independent of the eating disorder, usually depression or anxiety. 

There are individuals who benefit from medications for various eating symptoms, but the overall psychiatric literature does not point to medications as a central part of treatment.

The problem with a supposed definitive article about this aspect of treatment is that it would be inherently misleading. The underlying message would be that medications can have a significant impact on recovery when reality and research prove otherwise.