Eating Disorders

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are sweeping this country and are rampant on junior high, high school, and college campuses. These disorders are often referred to as the Deadly Diet, but are often known by their more popular names: anorexia or bulimia. They affect more than 20% of females between the age of thirteen and forty. It is very rare for a young female not to know of someone with an eating disorder. Statistics show that at least one in five young women have a serious problem with eating and weight (Bruch, 25).

The Deadly Diet appears to be a mostly female problem. Eating disorders are most common in the middle to upper middle class families. Currently, the incidence is much lower in females from the “blue collar” families. The Deadly Diet can begin anywhere from the ages of ten to thirty. The peak age for the beginning of the Deadly Diet in females is eleven to fifteen; the peak for males is between fifteen and eighteen (Bauer, 89).

Most of the information on the Deadly Diet says that it is a problem of teenage girls, but as clinics have found, most of the people who come to get therapy are in their twenties and thirties. This may be because younger people are less likely to seek professional help. Most often it is the parent who brings the patient for help. Adults who have left home and had to deal with managing their lives usually tend to realize more clearly the need to seek help and make changes.

Everywhere one looks today, one will notice that our culture places a very high value on women being thin. Many will argue that today’s fashion models have “filled out” compared to the times past; however the evidence of this is really hard to see. Our society admires men for what they accomplish and what they achieve. Women are usually evaluated by and accepted for how they look, regardless of what they do. A woman can be incredibly successful and still find that her beauty or lack of it will have more to do with her acceptance than what she is able to accomplish. “From the time they are tiny children, most females are taught that beauty is the supreme objective in life” (Claude-Pierre, p18). The peer pressure for girls in school to be skinny is often far greater than for boys to make a team. When it is spring, young girls begin thinking “How am I going to look in my bathing suit? I better take off a few more pounds.”

Another reason t...

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...than men, our society is evolving. Men can act more sensitively. “We are finally a more humanistic culture rather than a culture of warriors.” (Claude-Pierre, p.70) Eating disorders among men are on the rise-at least one million men number among the eight million people who suffer from them in the United States. The Deadly Diet affects many people, but it can be cured.

Works Cited

Ardell, Maureen and Corry-Ann Ardell. Portrait of an Anorexic; A Mother Daughter’s Story. Vancouver, B.C., Canada: Flight Press, 1985.

Bauer, Barbara G. Ph.D., Wayne Anderson, Ph.D., and Robert W. Hyatt, M.D. Bulimia, Book for Therapist and Client. Indianapolis: Accelerated Development Inc., 1986.

Bruch, Hilde M.D. The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Claude-Pierre. The Secret Language of Eating Disorders. New York: Random House, 1997.

Hall, Lindsey and Leigh Cohn. Bulimia: A Guide to Recovery. San Francisco: Guize Books, 1986.

Simpson, Carolyn. Coping with Compulsive Eating. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 1997.

Trum, Beatrice. “Bulimia.” Homer’s Consumer’s Research Magazine. September 1997: p.10.