Eating Disorders

By Shae, December 2005

Eating disorders are very serious. Left untreated, they can be fatal. In a society that is obsessed with thinness and dieting, children are pressured at a young age to be conscious of their weight. Young women are especially targeted by digitally altered images of woman with enhanced features and unrealistic bodies. Carol Gilligan, a Harvard professor who studied psychological development of teenage girls in 1988, found that they experience a major drop in self-esteem during adolescence. Only 29 percent of teenage girls said they “felt happy the way I am,” as opposed to the 60 percent of nine-year-old girls. Gilligan suggests that teenagers’ crisis in self-esteem is attributed to the image that a girl has of herself and what society tells her she should be.

Many teenagers, both male and female, resort to eating disorders to obtain the ideal body image that society has constructed for them. The three most common eating disorders found in youth today are bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating disorder. The first step to helping a child with one of these disorders is to recognize there is a problem.

So What is the Difference

Bulimia: Bulimia is the repeated cycle of over excessive eating that is out of control followed by some form of purging. This purging may be done with self-induced vomiting, excessive use of laxatives or diuretics, or obsessive exercising. People who have this disorder feel out of control and may spend money excessively, abuse drugs or alcohol, or engage in chaotic relationships.
Anorexia: Anorexia is self-imposed starvation. It is a serious, life threatening disorder, which usually results from underlying emotional causes. Although people with anorexia are obsessed with food they deny their hunger and refuse to eat.
Binge Eating Disorder: Binge Eating Disorder is characterized primarily by periods of impulsive gorging or continuous eating. While there is no purging, there may be sporadic fasts or repetitive diets. Body weight may vary from normal to mild, moderate, or severe obesity.

People develop eating disorders as a way of dealing with the conflicts, pressures, and stresses in their lives. Their eating disorders may be used as a way to express control when the rest of life seems out of control. If left unattended these disorders could have lasting detrimental affects on the bodies and minds of those who suffer them. Save your child. If you think you teenager is dealing with some of these problems, seek help now before it is too late.

Sources

Phillips, Kimberly. How Seventeen Undermines Young Women. Retrieved November 27, 2005 at www.fair.org
Basic Facts About Eating Disorders. Retrieved November 30, 2005 at www.gurze.com

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