Co-occurrence of Substance Use and Eating Disorders: An Approach to the Adolescent Patient in the Context of Family Centered Care. A Literature Review

ABSTRACT

In this review article, the co-occurrence of substance use and eating disorders will be discussed with a specific emphasis on the approach to the adolescent patient in the context of family centered care. The evidence to date suggests that the associations between eating and substance use disorders are multifactorial. Balancing between confidential health care for substance use and family centered health care for eating disorders is a real challenge in the management of adolescent patients with co-occurring eating and substance use disorders. Reconciling confidential health care with parental involvement should be considered with individually determined limits of confidentiality.

KEYWORDS:

• Eating disorder
• substance use
• comorbidity
• adolescent
• confidentiality
• family based treatment

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nuray Kanbur

Nuray Kanbur, MD, is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine and Division of Adolescent Medicine at Hacettepe University, Turkey. Dr. Kanbur graduated from Hacettepe University, Faculty of Medicine and completed her residency there in the Department of Pediatrics. She completed her clinical fellowship in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Canada. Dr. Kanbur is the Vice Dean of Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine and also the Director of the PhD Program of Adolescent Health and Medicine at the Child Health Institute of Hacettepe University. Additionally she is a clinician and researcher in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Hacettepe University. Her research and publications are in a variety of areas of adolescent health and medicine.

Abigail Harrison

Abigail Harrison, MBBS, DM (Pediatrics), is a consultant pediatrician and adolescent medicine subspecialist at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) and lecturer in the department of Child and Adolescent Health at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Kingston, Jamaica. She received her undergraduate medical training followed by postgraduate training in Pediatrics at the UWI, and then went on to complete a clinical fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children/ University of Toronto in Canada. She is the founder and director of the Teen Clinic and Young Families programme for teen parents and their children at the UHWI. Dr. Harrison is currently completing a visiting research fellowship at the Tropical Medicine Research Institute at the UWI. Her research interests are in a variety of areas in adolescent health. As the first adolescent medicine trained physician in Jamaica, she has as one of her goals the continued improvement of adolescent health care in Jamaica and the Caribbean, to be achieved through national, regional and international collaborative efforts.