A Case for Incorporating Obesity into the DSM (original) (raw)

Obesity is excess adipose tissue resulting from disproportionate energy intake and expenditure. Current trends indicate a crisis of overweight and obesity (OW/OB) worldwide. The International Statistical-Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems employs an energy model of overweight, hence professional interventions include appetite suppressors, lifelong pharmaceuticals and bariatric operations. These have been largely inefficacious, since individuals do have underlying cognitive and emotional drivers for consumption. Dietary restrictions may produce preoccupation with food, and nutritional counselling and behavioural therapy inefficaciously alter eating habits. Thus, an alternative perspective on obesity’s causal framework, particularly via a psychological component, is important in obesity reduction. In explicating this perspective, this paper concludes that obesity should be introduced into the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Obesity was demonstrated to have a strong psychological, behavioural and neurobiological component. The neuropsychological correlates between obesity and substance addiction were examined; the paper concluded that the addictiveness of eating may operate through heightening reward value of pleasant food via reward pathways because of repeated hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis activation. Finally, a comparison of the criteria utilised to exclude another syndrome, Internet Addiction (IA), was used to further support incorporating obesity into the DSM-5. This is because obesity met the inclusion criteria which involved a theoretical grasp within the literature of the etiology and pathophysiology underpinning obesity.

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