ABSTRACT
The diagnosis of males with eating disorders (EDs) is usually a straightforward process, but as with appendicitis, you have to first think of it as a possibility. Accurate identification of anorexia nervosa (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN) in males has been neglected for primarily two reasons: (1) because of its statistical scarcity, it is not as familiar to clinicians as eating disorders in women and so may not be recognized when it does occur; (2) theoretical biases in some diagnostic methods preclude it from existence. Some psychiatric formulations maintain, for example, that males cannot develop these disorders because they do not manifest a particular required psychodynamic theme, such as fear of oral impregnation, or because they do not have the amenorrhea required by some criteria.
