Binge Eating Disorder: Drug Therapy

Therapy goals

• Improvement of the symptomatology
• Avoidance of complications or secondary diseases

Therapy recommendations

• Binge-eating disorder is usually treated on an outpatient basis. If there is insufficient change with outpatient therapy, inpatient therapy is required. Other reasons for inpatient therapy include:
  • Severity of illness (e.g., low motivation).
  • Severe conflicts in the social and family environment
  • Severe mental and physical concomitant diseases (eg, diabetes mellitus).
  • Suicidality (suicide risk)
• Binge Eating Disorder basically can not be treated with medication alone. It must always be simultaneously psychotherapy and nutrition therapy!Note: The therapy of first choice is psychotherapy.
• An improvement of the symptomatology by drug therapy is only possible to a limited extent: fluoxetine, fluvoxamine (antidepressants: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRI) (off-label use; use outside the indication areas or the group of people for which the drugs are approved by the drug authorities).
• See also under “Other therapy.”