
The conversation around eating disorders is usually limited to well known conditions like bulimia or anorexia.

The historical findings are related to the descriptive criteria for pica in DSM–III–R and Draft ICD–10. Facts about Pica, a rare eating disorder. This paper aimed to locate and assess chronologically significant definitions and accounts of pica, to provide a fuller clinical description of a condition which, despite its current relevance, has received little detailed historical examination, and to give some consideration to the multiple aetiological theories which have been put forward. Stories of celebrities who endorse eating.

Yet one 2011 study showed that hospitalizations for pica have risen by 93 percent between 19, suggesting the disorder is becoming more common. Another complication of pica is that it’s likely to go unreported, Taub-Dix said. Several possible explanations for pica include cultural influences and nutritional. Pica might also ruin teeth and gums or cause mental agitation. While pica can occur in people of all ages, it is most common in pregnant women and young children. The first line of treatment for people diagnosed with Pica is to correct any mineral or nutritional deficiencies caused by the disorder. Instead, the diagnosis is made from a clinical history of the patient. Those things can be like ice, paint, bricks, calk pieces, soil etc kind of things. Pica is an eating disorder that involves eating items that are not typically thought of as food and that do not contain significant nutritional value, such as hair, dirt, and paint chips. The primary aim of this therapeutic technique is to reinforce desired behaviors through rewards, like food, verbal praise, money, toys and prizes. Pica is an eating disorder in which the individual develops a craving to eat something which has no nutritive value. The cornerstone to childhood treatment of pica is behavior modification. Common items consumed include paper, soap, chalk, hair, and paint chips. Praising the child for eating healthy food items and discarding nonfood items that they would have previously eaten. Extensive research on the history and terminology of eating disorders from the 16th to the 20th century suggests that, historically, pica was regarded as a symptom of other disorders rather than a separate entity. Pica is an eating disorder in which individuals compulsively eat non-food items.

Pica in children, and feeding disorder in infancy and childhood, are incorporated with enuresis, encopresis, and feeding, movement and speech disorders in a separate “heterogeneous group of disorders”. However, in the Draft of ICD–10, only anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are listed under eating disorders. In DSM–III–R, pica, with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and rumination disorder of infancy, is accorded the status of a separate eating disorder. Pica is an appetite for non-nutritive substances (e.g., coal, soil, chalk, paper etc.) or an abnormal appetite for some things that may be considered foods.
