Eating Disorders

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The rise of clinically diagnosed cases of anorexia nervosa nervosa and bulimia nervosa nervosa are increasing over the decades. According to Barlow,Durand and Stewart(2012), eating disorders are found to be more prevalent among women, specifically between the ages of 12 and 25 years of age. Prior to modern research, researchers saw eating disorders as a Western phenomenon due to the fact that non western countries did not have such a wide variety of food available to them. This perspective is now changing. Individuals in other countries (non-western) have been diagnosed with eating disorders as well, however it is not as frequent as the United States or Canada for example(Barlow et al., 2012). The purpose of the paper is to describe the ways in which eating disorders began in the western world, but were slowly adapted to non western countries. I will be discussing the factors in which cause eating disorders such as biological and psychological issues, how the media and society portrays thinness and the prevalence of eating disorders in other non-westernized countries. To support these claims, I will be using several peer reviewed journal articles that I have found and also the assigned journal article that was given to me. I will begin by defining the medical diagnosis of each eating disorder. When I reference eating disorders in this paper, I am specifically talking about anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The following descriptions of each disorder come from the Casebook in Abnormal Psychology- Fourth Edition (Brown & Barlow 2011). According to the DSM- IV- TR, anorexia nervosa is a disorder that individuals become diagnosed with when the person does not want to maintain a good BMI level, has a great fear of gaining ... ... middle of paper ... ...r sample and anxiety disorder sample. Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Psychiatry, 46(2), 118-131. doi:10.1177/0004867411432071 Ferguson, C., Muñoz, M., Winegard, B., & Winegard, B. (2012). The Influence of Heritability, Neuroticism, Maternal Warmth and Media Use on Disordered Eating Behaviors: A Prospective Analysis of Twins. Psychiatric Quarterly, 83(3), 353-360. doi:10.1007/s11126-012-9205-7 Bilukha, O. O., & Utermohlen, V. (2002). Internalization of Western standards of appearance, body dissatisfaction and dieting in urban educated Ukrainian females. European Eating Disorders Review, 10(2), 120-137. doi:10.1002/erv.431 Frederick, D. A., Forbes, G. B., & Berezovskaya, A. (2008). Female Body Dissatisfaction and Perceptions of the Attractive Female Body in Ghana, the Ukraine, and the United States. Psihologijske Teme / Psychological Topics, 17(2), 203-219.

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