Recent Sociocultural values emphasize thinness, so most women are dissatisfied with their bodies and preoccupied with dieting. Therefore they go on strict diets, which lead to binge eating and purging as compensatory behavior. These practices can develop into eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, which are associated with psychological variables such as body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and depression.
Eating disorders have increased rapidly since 1990 in Korea, but there have been few therapeutic interventions. However, there have been a large amount of research done on eating disorders and their therapeutic solhtibns in western countries. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been known to be the most effective among psycho and behavioral therapies because it intervenes not only in eating behaviors but also deals with the psychological variables. Most patients with eating disorders are women and nurses have easy to access to them and prevention. Therefore, the therapeutic intervention of eating behavior is to be a important role of community mental health nurse and clinical specialist nurse in the future.
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