What is remission in adolescent anorexia nervosa? A review of various conceptualizations and quantitative analysis

Abstract

These methods of defining remission produce a wide range of outcomes, demonstrating the importance of defining remission consistently. Weight and psychological variables combined appear most important in defining remission.

What is recovery in adolescent anorexia nervosa?

“…It might be viewed that the failure to include menstrual data as a physical health outcome measure is a major oversight. However, as we have argued pre-viously, including menstrual data introduces a high degree of arbitrariness in outcome categorization, whether for remission or recovery because of the inability to correctly classify boys, premenstrual girls, and those on birth control 14 who together compose up to 30-40% of study samples. Another limitation of this study was the inability to examine the corollary of recovery, i.e., relapse.…”

Predictors of dropout and remission in family therapy for adolescent anorexia nervosa in a randomized clinical trial

“…18 Existing categorical schemes suffer from a range of limitations, while comparisons of various proposed remission standards lead to extremely large variations, and therefore widely diverging conclusions, as to the effectiveness of an approach. 18 Suggested variables that may predict outcome include duration of illness, degree of weight loss, presence of binge-purge behaviors, family functioning, previous treatment (including hospitalization), co-morbidity, and early response to treatment. 7,[19][20][21] To better describe the processes of treatment response with FBT, we examined data collected as part of a study of FBT treatment dose.…”

Short-term outcome of anorexia nervosa in adolescents after inpatient treatment: a prospective study

“…Even if different methods of defining remission produce a wide range of different outcomes [3], these strong distinctions suggest much uncertainty about short-term outcome in adolescents with AN.…”