On anorexia and bulimia: Conceptions and etiological suppositions from the perspective of health professionals

Abstract

Anorexia and bulimia are serious syndromes that require careful management. Clinical practice and literature show, however, that their approach is often inadequate. In this study, we were interested in knowing the discourse of health professionals about the characterization and etiology of these disorders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 workers from the public health network of a city in Minas Gerais/Brazil. From the points of convergence, divergence and silence of the speech, we locate discursive axes such as distortion of the body image; stigma; the slim body aesthetic pattern conveyed by the media. We came to the discursive formation of all of them through a critical dialogue with medical psychoanalytic and sociological literature. The results point to the insufficiency of biomedical knowledge in this context, indicating the need for dialogues with other theories to reach more effective strategies of approach.