Treatment of bulimia with antidepressants.

Bulimia is a syndrome of compulsive binge eating that is often associated with serious morbidity and usually resistant to existing psychological or pharmacological treatments. We report use of tricyclic antidepressants in eight bulimic patients, six of whom obtained moderate or marked reduction of their eating binges within 2-4 weeks. This preliminary observation suggests that antidepressants may be of value in treating bulimia and adds to the evidence linking bulimia with affective disorder.