ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the prevalence of eating disorders and provides an overview of the main hypotheses concerning risk and maintenance factors. It aims to classify eating disorders into separate diagnostic categories, some theorists have argued that the different eating disorder categories reflect different manifestations of the same underlying psychopathology. Although many people today are familiar with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Many individuals use eating disorder behaviors such as binge eating and purging to cope with intense negative emotions. There are numerous risk factors that fall into the categories of biological, psychological, and sociocultural influences on eating disorders. This is consistent with the biopsychosocial model of eating disorder development proposed by C. Johnson and M. E. Connors. Because of the difficulty identifying who will develop an eating disorder, most of the interventions for eating disorders are therapeutic rather than preventative.
