Metabolism + Psychiatry = Eating Disorders

The metabolism and psychiatry curricula converged last week with a discussion on eating disorders. Having spent 4 years studying the neurobiology of anorexia and bulimia nervosa with Dr. Walter Kaye at the UCSD Eating Disorders Treatment and Research Program, I was naturally curious as to how the topic would be presented.

Dr. Kenneth Weiner (who heads the Eating Recovery Center here in Denver) gave a one-hour lecture during which he commented that this one-hour lecture is the extent of our contact hours throughout medical school touching on eating disorders. Further, according to Dr. Weiner, internal medicine residents get a grand total of 8 hours of lecture on eating disorders. Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked by those figures, given how much material there is to cover and the limited space in the curriculum. The lecture itself is one I've heard dozens of times before - still very interesting given that Dr. Weiner has his own style of presentation and his own vantage point of eating disorders quite distinct from Dr. Kaye's.

The lecture was followed by an interview (in our regular psychiatry small groups) with a patient recovering from an eating disorder.