Eating Disorders are merely a Product of our time and culture

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“Eating Disorders are merely a Product of our time and culture”. Discuse

 INTROCUCTION TO EATING DISORDERS

For most people food is not only a necessity but also a pleasure. This makes eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating, one of the hardest mental illnesses to comprehend.

Although clinical descriptions of eating disorders can be traced back many years, Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa appeared in the DSM for the first time in 1980. (Abnormal Psychology, ed.5, p. 207). Anorexia Nervosa is an illness that mainly affects adolescent girls. The Patients do not loose appetite but they repress their feeling of hunger. Like AN patients, people suffering from Bulimia Nervosa are afraid of growing fat. Is an illness most commonly found in girls of later adolescence and early adulthood. Patients in order to avoid weight gain, they will go through food restriction, often vomiting, laxative abuse or excessive exercising. Another eating disorder is Binging eating disorder, which distinguished from Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa by the absence of weight loss and of purging.

SUPPORTED THESIS OF THE ESSAY.

Over the past decades, eating disorders have become relatively well known both to health professionals and to the wider public. Yet in spite of this notoriety, many people have a wrong or incomplete idea of what an eating disorder actually represents. The popular view is that it stands for an ‘eating problem’, characterized either by overeating and being overweight or by restricted food consumption and emaciation. While this view certainly reflects the clinical features of some eating disorders, it also disregards their clinical complexity and diversity. (Stephan Van Den Broucke,1997, p.1).

 Like many other psychiatric disorders, EDs show a considerable variation of causes. There are numerous theories for the aetiology of EDs. According to the International Eating Disorder Referral Organization, the development of EDs can be based on Psychological, Sociocultural and Interpersonal factors. While these theories are rarely in conflict and indeed mutually overlapping, suggesting that the cause of eating disorders is just a product of our time and culture would be incomplete.

At the current study, we examining all different factors, which may be related to eating disorders, based on previous researches and findings. Hence, psychological and interpersonal factors will be discussed and analysed parallel with the sociocultural factors, which may be responsible for the increase of eating disorder sufferers in our days.

 

Eating disorders as other mental difficulties can be based in interpersonal factors.

Researchers showed that a history of sexual, physical or even psychological abuse (e.g. bullying) could lead to the development of eating disorders. Abuse at early age, involving force, and by a family member may bear a stronger relationship to eating disorders (Everill & Waller, 1995).

Hence, as eating disorders are usually a multidimensional problem, information about the patients’ position within the family and marital status are of great importance. Self-reports of patients consistently reveal high levels of conflict in the family (e.g. Kent & Clopton,1992), and disturbed family relationships do seem to characterize the families of some eating-disordered patients.(Abnormal psychology, p.218). Salvador Minuchin and his colleagues (1975) have proposed the family dynamics, for both anorexia and bulimia, where families of children with eating disorders exhibit the following characteristics:

1) Enmeshment- parents overinvolvement

2) Over protectiveness

3) Rigidity-demanding parents

  1. Lack of conflict resolution.

(Abnormal psychology, p.216-217).

Investigated the patient’s family background in very important as even patients who no longer live with their parents, often demonstrate a striking dependence or discordant relationship with their parents ( Minuchin et. al., 1978; Vandereycken et al., 1989).

Furthermore, marital status often represents a significant contextual variable for patients with eating disorders. This hypotheses, can be based in one out of four issues:

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  1. A correspondence between the patient and the spouse with regard to psychiatric illness,
  2. A lack of marital satisfaction and intimacy,
  3. Deficient communication
  4. Inadequate conflict strategies.

(Eating Disorders and Marital Relationships)

In general, physical appearance has a very important impact in couples’ relationships. Many anorectics and bulimics want to please others including their partners. They are convinced that looking good is the best guarantee for an enduring relationship, to the point where appearing physically attractive becomes an obsession. In this way eating disorder helps them to cope with the fear of being deserted. (Eating Disorders and ...

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