Body Size Estimation in Anorexia Nervosa

Clinicians who deal with patients with anorexia nervosa are well acquainted with their patients' inability to recognise their emaciation. The patients' insistence that they are normal weight or even overweight, against clear evidence to the contrary, led Bruch (1962) to state that the misperception reaches “delusional proportions”. Studies of body size perception in anorexia nervosa that have used the ‘body part’ method have invariably found that the patients overestimate their body size (Slade & Russell, 1973; Crisp & Kalucy, 1974; Pierloot & Houben, 1978; Garner et al, 1976; Button et al, 1977; Fries, 1977; Casper et al, 1979) but the majority have not found any significant difference in size estimation between patients and controls (Slade, 1985).