Anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is the term used to describe a specific disorder of appetite. The name of this complaint is to some extent misleading as it implies loss of appetite of nervous origin. While this is in part true, it is inaccurate. The non‐medical reader may be left with the impression that the description includes all those rather ‘nervous’, tense or over anxious people who also have a poor appetite and occasional refusal of food or excessive faddiness about their food. This, of course, is not so.