Chronic Anorexia: A Behaviour Problem

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Abstract
The chronic refusal to eat sometimes referred to as chronic anorexia can be effectively controlled through techniques developed in the behavioural laboratory. Contemporary methods used to reinstate normal eating such as persuasion, coaxing, spoon-feeding, insulin injections, tube-feeding, and others, can result in the patient being shaped or conditioned to eat only with assistance. Based on an experimental investigation of erratic eating in mental patients, the authors present a behavioural model for the identification and treatment of chronic refusal to eat. The syndrome of chronic anorexia is regarded largely as the acquired, learned, behaviour of rejecting food. When food rejection is not followed by social reinforcement it disappears in a relatively short period of time, and normal eating is reinstated.

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