More handpicked essays just for you.
Eating disorders among adolescents
Eating disorders among adolescents
History and background of anorexia nervosa
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Eating disorders among adolescents
tital Classified as a serious mental illness, anorexia strikes many people about the age sixteen to twenty years old. That is about eighty six percent of people between the age 16-20 years old who have a problem or has dealt with anorexia (“Eating Disorder statistics”). Thirty million people each year, all different ages, become anorexic. According to Linda Gehlin the definition of anorexia is “ loss of appetite,” but she does not agree with that because anorexia is not a loss of appetite. Anorexia is about people not wanting to gain weight because they are too scared to, so they start to either: restrict what they eat, or they start purging (Gehlin). Restricting type, and purging type are two different ways to define, or show what kind
Anorexic: this word is an adjective, a label, and to some, a lifestyle. Medically speaking, it is someone who suffers from the deadly and heartbreaking disease, Anorexia Nervosa. This term translates to “nervous loss of appetite”, but anyone who has battled through this sickness is aware how that is anything but true. Eating disorder patients do not, in fact, lose their appetite; there is more to it than that. Many perceive eating disorders as a choice to be thin, a diet, or a cry for attention; they do not see the mental destruction going on inside of the mind. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, yet only 30% of people fully recover (ANAD). The general mindset that society has about eating disorders walks hand in hand with these statistics, slowing down any advances patients may be able to make. Eating disorder patients are not getting proper treatment because of ignorant misconceptions about the illness.
Research, 2016. Bordo implicated popular culture as having a serious negative role in how women of America view their bodies. These images have led to drastic increase change in life altering female disorders and eating. Not only does these images affect Americans but young men and women too which they should be fighting against it, not for
The DSM-IV definition of anorexia nervosa has four conditions. The definition states: "I) Refusal to maintain body weight for age and height; 2) intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight; 3) disturbance in the way in one's body weight, size, or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight; and 4) in females, ammenorrhea" (1). There remain two kinds of an nervosa as well the restricting ": "the person has not regularly engaged in binge-eating or purging behavior-" and the binge-eating/purging type.- "in which the person has regularly engaged in these behaviors" (1). Anorexia nervosa usually occurs during adolescence and in females. This definition becomes important in understanding the relationship between anorexia nervosa and obsessivecompulsive disorder.
Anorexia is a condition that goes beyond out-of-control dieting. This psychological disorder initially begins with dieting to lose weight. The excessive drive to lose weight becomes secondary to the concerns about control and fear of one’s own body. An adolescent continues an endless cycle of controlled eating which is then often accompanied by other psychological and emotional behaviors. In an FDA consumer special report, Dixie Farley states, “the anorectic becomes obsessed with a fear of fat and losing weight[…] she sees normal folds of flesh as fat that must be eliminated[…] Anorectics are described as having low self-esteem and feeling that others are controlling their lives. Some may be overactive and her obsession increasingly controls her life. It’s an addiction.” A teenage girl with anorexia often restricts her dieting, sometimes to a point of starvation in order to feel control over her body. As she keeps dieting, a domino of emotional and psychological stress begins to affect her body and the endless cycle of restrictive eating and over exercising begins to lead to depression. In the end, this depression ultimately leads to a cycle that becomes an obsession and an addiction.
1. Eating disorders in our present society can be viewed as a multi-determined disorder for various reasons. The current definition of a multi-determined disorder is when there is more than one factor with a wide range of causes that creates the disorder to form. Negative influences from family members, friends, the western culture, or even a specific cultural may harshly impact a person and influence how he or she should live their life. Anorexia and Bulimia are both to be considered as a multi-determined disorder that is influenced greatly by socio-cultural, biological and psychological factors. Subcultures create large pressures and restraints to diet and become thin. For instance, the Asian culture, if a person is overweight, they are frowned upon and considered almost as a disgrace to the community. Studies have also proven that family histories that have a weight loss disorder are more likely to also develop depression and anxiety disorders and are more likely found in women. Daily habits in a household also greatly impact the way a child is raised. Factors such as being over protective or having excessive control may also lead to forming an eating disorder, which anorexia becomes more susceptible for children. Psychological factors are most commonly formed when other views and living habits become more influential than our own. The way others perceive a person is defined as a schema. Once schemas are formed they may store in a person’s long-term memory and create self-schemas. Negative self-schemas will change an individual’s personality to become unstable and believe they are constantly being judged. Self-concept then forms leading to more harmful disorders such as poor self-esteem, depression and inability ...
A variation of Anorexia, Bulimia ranges from excessive food intake, to an out of control compulsive cycle of binge eating where extraordinary amounts of any available food, usually of high carbohydrate content, may be consumed. Once having gorged, the victims are overcome with the urge to rd themselves of what they hate eaten by purging themselves, usually by vomiting, and sometimes by massive doses of laxatives. Between these obsessive bouts, most are able to accept some nutrition. Whereas the anorexic sufferer fears fatness from anticipated loss of eating control, and unlike the anorexic sufferer the typical bulimic individual is not emaciated, but usually maintains a normal body weight and appears to be fit and healthy.
Anorexia is a psychiatric disorder that is most common in young women. Those who suffer with anorexia have a fear of gaining weight and have an inaccurate portrayal of their own bodies. They see themselves as being fat, even though they are already thin to begin with. They are willing to go to extreme measures to lose weight, but the only outcome is a severely unhealthy body weight. To achieve the weight they want they will either starve themselves or do a tremendous amount of exercise.
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder with the highest mortality rate of any other mental disorder. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders characterizes the disorder as “a relentless pursuit of thinness and unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy body weight”. (2014) Individuals also experience a “distortion of body image, intense fear of gaining weight and extremely disturbed eating behavior.” (National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Related Disorders, 2014) As a result, they experience complications physically, mentally and socially. About 80% of individuals with eating disorders suffer from cardiac complications with death due to arrhythmias being the most common cause. This paper will focus on the connection between AN and cardiovascular rhythm disturbances. Individuals with this disorder have an increased chance of sudden death due to cardiovascular abnormalities like bradycardia, myocardial modification including atrophy and refeeding syndrome. (Casiero & Frishman, 2006)
Eating Disorders (EDs) are a series of often life-threatening mental health disorders which are commonly used as coping mechanisms or as ways to mask one’s problems. The causes of these illnesses are still being researched, and the effects they have on a person’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing can often be as long as the sufferer’s life.
Anorexia is a serious disorder that involves compulsive dieting and excessive weight loss. According to The National Institute of Mental Health, anorexia is characterized by emaciation, a relentless pursuit of thinness, and extremely disturbed eating behaviors (Parks, 2009). The “disturbed eating behaviors” associated with anorexia include unhealthy weight loss and weight control methods, behaviors such as abusing or self-induced vomiting, and a distorted view of one’s personal appearance (Shepphird, 2010). Anorexics in general survive on 500 calories or less per day, and they count every calorie they consume (Parks, 2009). Symptoms often also include the inability or refusal to maintain a healthy weight and a great fear of gaining weight (Shepphird, 2010).
Anorexia Nervosa or just Anorexia, is characterized by an extreme and intense fear of gaining weight, which leads the person to pursue continuous weight loss. Sometimes, a diet can begin innocently, but anorexics don't stop at a rational point. They keep going until their lives may be threatened. Anorexics may use many methods of weight loss along with dieting and fasting. They use excessive exercise, diet pills, laxatives, diuretics, or vomiting as ways of feeling thinner or controlling calories, but whatever the method, the primary goal is thinness. One may wonder why anorexics don't stop dieting once they become skinny. The reason is that a major characteristic of anorexia is a problem called distorted body image. This means that anorexics look at their bodies very differently than other people do. When they look in the mirror, they never see themselves as being too thin. They "feel fat" And usually overestimate their weight. If an anorexic is told she is too skinny, she is more likely to be happy than upset. Many times, anorexics don't believe that they have a problem. Using weight reduction is just a way of coping with other pressures.
Most of you probably already know what anorexia is, however in case you don't anorexia is basically a disease involving self-starvation. Anorexia victims have a very low "ideal" weight. It might begin as a normal diet carried to extremes, reducing their food intake to a bare minimum. Rules are made of how much food they can eat in one day and how much exercise is required after eating certain amounts of food. With anorexia, there is a strong almost overwhelming fear of putting on weight and they are preoccupied with the way that their bodies look. Anorexia sometimes involves use of laxatives, diet pills, or self-induced vomiting to lose or to keep weight off (http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/diseases/facts/anorexianervosa.htm). Anorexics may show symptoms such as extreme weight loss for no medical reason. Also, many deny their hunger, chew excessively, choosing low calorie foods and exercising excessively (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health).
Out of all mental illnesses found throughout the world, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate. Anorexia nervosa is one of the more common eating disorders found in society, along with bulimia nervosa. Despite having many definitions, anorexia nervosa is simply defined as the refusal to maintain a normal body weight (Michel, 2003). Anorexia nervosa is derived from two Latin words meaning “nervous inability to eat” (Frey, 2002). Although anorexics, those suffering from anorexia, have this “nervous inability to eat,” it does not mean that they do not have an appetite—anorexics literally starve themselves. They feel that they cannot trust or believe their perceptions of hunger and satiation (Abraham, 2008). Anorexics lose at least 15 percent of normal weight for height (Michel, 2003). This amount of weight loss is significant enough to cause malnutrition with impairment of normal bodily functions and rational thinking (Lucas, 2004). Anorexics have an unrealistic view of their bodies—they believe that they are overweight, even if the mirror and friends or family say otherwise. They often weigh themselves because they possess an irrational fear of gaining weight or becoming obese (Abraham, 2008). Many anorexics derive their own self-esteem and self-worth from body weight, size, and shape (“Body Image and Disordered Eating,” 2000). Obsession with becoming increasingly thinner and limiting food intake compromises the health of individuals suffering from anorexia. No matter the amount of weight they lose or how much their health is in jeopardy, anorexics will never be satisfied with their body and will continue to lose more weight.
Of the three eating disorders, anorexia gets the most attention and has the highest mortality rate of six percent out of any mental illness. According to the International Journal of Eating Disorders, half of the deaths caused by anorexia are suicide. Anorexia is when an individual feels that his or her body is distorted. Anorexia is also when an individual starves himself or herself because of the fear of being overweight (Elkins 44). If an individual suffers from anorexia they will loose anywhere from fifteen to sixty percent of their body weight by starving his or herself. Some of the symptoms of anorexia are heart problems, anemia, and fertility problems (“Eating Disorders”). Another horrible eating disorder is bulimia, which is when a person over eats, feels guilty, and then purges, take...
Anorexia is a type of eating disorder who has an intense fear of gaining weight. They severely limit the amount of food they eat and can become dangerously thin (1). Anorexia affects both the mind and body and can even become deadly. Anorexia usually starts in the teen years and can go into adult hood. Untreated anorexia can lead to starvation and serious health problems, such as osteoporosis, kidney damage, and heart problems. Some people die from these problems (1). The cause of anorexia is not fully understood. It is thought to be from a mix of physical, emotional,, and social triggers (2). Extreme dieting changes how the brain and metabolism work, and it stresses the body. Genetics play a big part in anorexia. A combination of certain personality traits such as low self-confidence along with perfectionism and cultural and social pressures can play a big part in anorexia. For some teens, anorexia can be a way of coping with stressful events, such as moving, divorce, or the death of a love one (2).