Thin Movie Analysis

Thin
Briana C. Davis
Blue Ridge Community Technical College
Author Note
This paper was prepared for Introduction to Psychology PSY 203, taught by Ashley Chamber.
Thin
The documentary takes place at The Renfew Center in Florida. This facility is for treating women with eating disorders. The women in this documentary each have a different reason for being admitted into the facility. This documentary not only follows the patients and staff in the facility but more specifically four women. In this review, I will not only give more information on these women but also compare them with theories/concepts from an Introductory Psychology textbook.
Shelly Guillory, 25
Shelly Guillory, a psychiatric nurse, was one of the first patients that was followed

Unlike the other girls, Polly states that her family was the cause of her eating disorder. She says, “All the things that are symptoms of eating disorders were taught by my family. To cut my food into really small pieces, chew really slowly, take your time, and always drink water in between bites so you can fill up faster” (Greenfield, 2006). By age 11, Polly was able to calculate how much calories and fats a food had. Polly was eventually kicked out for not only supplying another patient with her medicine but also not following the rules of the facility.
When I first heard about what Polly’s family taught her to do it made me think of what having an eating disorder means. Eating disorders are characterized by persistent, gross disturbances in eating patterns (Rathus, 2018). According to the National Eating Disorders Association (2016), nearly half of 9- to 11-year-old girls are “sometimes” or “very often” dieting (Rathus, 2018). This statistic falls right where Polly states that she started her calorie counting. There are two types of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa or having drastic weight loss and bulimia nervosa which is a cycle of binge eating and