A leading Australian psychiatrist has renewed a push to remove ‘underweight’ from the criteria used to diagnose anorexia nervosa, and throw out the current classification system for eating disorders altogether.

The preoccupation with thinness was preventing people with “normal” or higher body mass indexes (BMIs) seeking and getting treatment for these severe, potentially life-threatening conditions, Professor Phillipa Hay, Foundation Chair of Mental Health at Western Sydney University argues.

It overshadowed “more relevant” psychological features of anorexia, Professor Hay wrote in the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrist’s academic research journal.

Her radical proposal to toss out the current eating disorder classifications and start anew has long been contested within psychiatry.