Abstract
This paperback is easily read and ‘digested’ and, unlike many weightier tomes in the field, offers both an and up-to-date slant on the role of various and cultural factors in the development of and bulimia nervosa. Arguing quite convincingly the eating disorders are prime examples of ‘culture bound’ syndromes it explores the roles religion, sport, the media and fashion in both modern third world cultures. One interesting chapter focuses how community trends such as ‘diet’ books and the glamorization of weight loss interact with individual factors in the eventual outcome of eating disorders. Finally, the author offers some thought provoking about why men develop eating disorders and how disorders are now appearing in cultures once far from our ‘fat phobic’ society.
Although treatment and management is not touched, trainee psychiatrists and newcomers to the field, as as those with a special interest in the area, will find book gives a broad overview of sociocultural factors does it in a conversational style which holds the's interest and which would be well suited to an at self-education which is not too taxing. My only would be that by not attempting any comment how sociocultural factors might be brought into an's treatment, the practical usefulness of the book limited. It left me wondering whether the author has able to translate his obvious interest into any kind of intervention in an obviously important and underexplored of study in a difficult patient population.