The study goes against years of Prozac prescriptions which were previously believed to help treat the life-threatening eating disorder.
Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, a professor of psychiatry at New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center, and the lead author of the study, explains, "People should not rely on medication which doesn't look terribly effective, but turn their attention to other treatments which may be more useful."
Dr. Walsh explains the misdiagnosis; "A lot of people with anorexia, even after they regain weight, have symptoms of anxiety and depression, and clearly fluoxetine [the generic name for Prozac] is useful for those people."
"Also, fluoxetine is clearly efficacious in the treatment of bulimia, and a number of people with anorexia have these symptoms."
Dr. Onelia G. Lage, from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, says the result "makes sense because anorexia is not a medically treated disease. So, yes, you're going to have relapse if the underlying family and psychological function continues to exist."
According to HealthDay, anorexia nervosa, a disorder marked by extreme dieting and other behaviors to keep body weight abnormally low, has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. The disorder, which primarily affects women, also has a high rate of relapse, with some 30 percent to 50 percent of patients requiring re-hospitalization within one year of their initial discharge.
