Eating disorders: are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa forms of depression?

The ‘Case of Ellen West’ is an uncommonly disturbing account of a disturbingly common mental disorder. Quotations from the patient’s own diary and letters, in which she recorded her most intimate thoughts and feelings during her tragic psychological decline, give a three-dimensional quality to this classic case study, which was reported during the Second World War by the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger. ¹