Is the treatment chronic in adults?

Treatment depends on the stage of the eating disorder the person is in. If they have had the disorder for many years, undergone numerous treatments, and have already been diagnosed with a chronic condition, then treatment will focus on improving their quality of life. However, if it is a new disorder, it must be treated to prevent it from becoming chronic.

It's important to distinguish between an adult eating disorder and a chronic eating disorder. Some authors suggest that an eating disorder is considered chronic when there are seven consecutive years of the disorder with multiple relapses and no complete remission of symptoms. However, the increasingly early onset of the disorder and the severity of cases necessitate longer-term treatments, sometimes exceeding ten years, combining periods of hospitalization with outpatient follow-up until full recovery is achieved and chronicity is avoided. But it is true that, in adulthood, if the condition persists for more than seven years, we can consider treatments that support the highest possible quality of life even if the problem remains.

Here I want to highlight two aspects that I think are important to distinguish from chronic illness. The first is that being chronic doesn't mean we should lose hope of recovery. Sometimes the term binds us to the idea that we will never recover, and although that may be true to some extent, it's best not to think that way, as this leads us to the second point I wanted to make, which is thinking of chronic illness as the impossibility of living a full life.