Introduction: The increase of disorders connected to eating behaviours arises serious problems in the social and health-care setting. These require long-term therapeutic interventions, which have to be strongly integrated on the pharmacological, psychotherapeutic, social and cultural aspects. At present the issues develops itself on three levels: a) increase of the number of subjects, especially adolescents, b) protraction of the illness, with frequent critical relapses, c) always less defined evolution of the pathology with a tendency to become chronic and develop other kinds of illnesses. OUTLINE OF THE SURVEY: The Clinical Psychology Service of the CBM University Hospital examined 300 records of adolescents with various forms of eating disorders. Some of these interventions were requested by various clinical departments while other cases were directly taken care of and offering pharmacological as well as therapeutic interventions.
Results: The analysis of adolescents' dynamics allows an interpretation of modern eating disorders as one of the issues characteristic of the always more difficult body-mind integration. For adolescents corporeality is a weight, some kind of foreign body they don't like, and it is not thought as the basic way to get in contact with others so to express one's own feelings and wishes.
Conclusions: Eating disorders are very strong symptoms of personal and social malaise. For this reason they require an integrated intervention starting from the family environment, reaching the child in its uniqueness as well as the larger social context. Actually the latter sends messages to young people which are strongly destabilizing from an ethical point of view as well as for body aesthetics. A counseling service offered at first to parents becomes an effective way of preparing both sides to more complex and articulated types of treatment. These can be more expensive but can build up again a disturbed or not properly developed psychological balance in adolescents.