Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia nervosa (which means literally nervous loss of appetite) is a serious physical and mental illness which involves weight loss and determined control of appetite. It is sometimes known as the slimming disease because dieting is almost always its starting point. Its causes, however, go far deeper than fanatical slimming, and are the subject of current research. The disease affects approximately 1 per cent of girls of above average intelligence under 18 at academic institutions. Overall the incidence of anorexia is at the most 1:500 in females under 25 in developed countries where dieting is an option, not a necessity.

Anorexia Nervosa: Myth And Reality

• Many anorexics suffer from amenorrhoea, low blood pressure, cold hands and feet, downy hair growth on the face, arms and back, and their weight drops to as little as 50 per cent of the average for their age. However, these symptoms can signal other problems, too, so consult your doctor for diagnosis.

• Is anorexia nervosa the result of pressure from fashion magazines that to be beautiful you must be thin? To some extent it is, since the desire to conform is part of the onset of the disease. More important is fear which makes women attempt to starve away their secondary sexual characteristics, thus releasing them from the need to succeed in the sexual field.

• Anorexia is not a disease you catch from too much dieting. It is a disease resulting from psychological problems which may have evolved over a long period. Because of this, attacking eating problems will not cure anorexia. And it is not a modern disease: its incidence is documented in the 17th century.

• Anorexia nervosa is not just a teenage problem. Although it is most common among pubescent teenagers who become as easily obsessed by dieting as by pop music, it is a disturbed mental and emotional state (as at the trauma of puberty or a death), not a hormonal one, which produces anorexia. So it can happen at any age.

• Anorexics often have distorted images of their own bodies. They often imagine themselves to be much fatter than they are, and have similar distorted views of their own personalities.

• Most anorexics do not actually want to die although the incidence of death is high as result of starvation and more importantly prolonged damage to digestive organs, particularly the kidneys and pancreas. The incidence of suicide in longstanding anorexics is 5 per cent. They want to gain love and attention from parents and siblings, to change unhappy situations which may have been with them since childhood.

Coping With Anorexia

Anorexia nervosa requires medical help. Tradition treatments such as force-feeding, withdrawal privileges until the patient eats and puts on weigh rebuilding of dietary habits while in hospital an even psychotherapy and family therapy have not always been successful.

The main problems in anorexia which need treatment are the abnormal eating and living rituals, the sexual fears and above all the underlying sense inadequacy and unlovability. The anorexic needs help, too, in coping with adult, independent lift away from home. Coming to terms with the causes of the problem in the context of the whole family is crucial to a cure.

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