When eating disorders present in adulthood, the therapeutic task of uncovering and understanding the original aetiological variables is hampered by the development of secondary handicaps and the subject's position within the sick role. Often individual family experiential factors stem from adolescence, but time may have clouded their original meaning. Attention to early-onset cases therefore affords greater opportunity to understand the contribution of the various aetiological factors that lead to fears about weight and loss of control and the motives behind characteristic behaviours. In addition, such study offers opportunity for primary and secondary prevention.

The first edition of this book was based largely on the editors' own clinical and research experience at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and it became a leading resource in this area. The second edition, after a gap of about 6 years, has been fully revised. Many chapters have been completely rewritten and the result is a more comprehensive, evidence-based book, drawing on and distilling much of the published literature in this area from the past 10 years.

Like the previous edition, the book has a multi-disciplinary authorship reflecting the importance of the contributions of, for example, nursing, medicine, psychology and dietetics to the management of disorders that bridge physical and psychological medicine. In an area in which the dynamic between clinicians, patients and families is so crucial to success and in which users are not always positive about their treatment experience, attention to these relationships is particularly welcome and the contributions from a patient and parent about their experiences are very pertinent. The law regarding consent to treatment and the ethical issues around confidentiality and parental responsibility provide immense challenges, and the chapter on this subject is particularly welcome.

The revised edition is an excellent book, which is free from jargon and which will be an invaluable resource for all disciplines working with children and young people with eating disorders.