Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
General and supportive measures
ICD-10 code: F50.8
DESCRIPTION
This is an eating or feeding disturbance that manifests by a persistent failure to meet appropriate nutritional and/or energy requirements. There may be lack of interest in food, food avoidance due to sensory sensitivity or concerns about the aversive consequences of eating. Criteria include one or more of: failure to make the expected weight gains, nutritional deficiency, dependence on enteral feeding or nutritional supplements or marked interference with psychosocial functioning. There is no lack of food, socially acceptable practice present or perceptual disturbance of body weight or shape.
GENERAL AND SUPPORTIVE MEASURES
- Exclude medical, neurological or neuromuscular disorders.
- Assess the relationship between caregiver and infant and the attachment concerns that may manifest with feeding regulatory disorders in children.
- Exclude other psychiatric disorders, e.g. OCD, MDD, factitious disorder imposed on another (previously termed 'Munchausen’s by proxy').
Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List for South Africa, Hospital Level, Paediatrics, 2023 Edition
Chapter 14: Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 14.8 Feeding And Eating Disorders, 14.8.2 Avoidant/restrictive Food Intake Disorder