RESEARCH OWNED & PUBLISHED GLOBALLY BY THE PAPERSTORE, INC. 1-800-90-WRITE 1 Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are a significant cause of both "physical and psychosocial morbidity in adolescent girls and young adult women," as well as in men, but at a lower incidence rate (Fairburn and Harrison 407). Eating disorders are generally allocated to one of three diagnostic categories: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and the atypical eating disorders" (Fairburn and Harrison 407). The causes for eating disorders are complicated and poorly understood, but it is believed there is a genetic predisposition towards this type of behavior that is triggered by certain environmental risk factors (Fairburn and Harrison 407). The core clinical psychopathology for anorexia and bulimia are the virtually the same, as in each case, the male and female patient affected "over-evaluate their shape and weight" (Fairburn and Harrison 407). While psychologically healthy individuals based their sense of self-esteem on the way in which they perceive their performance in a variety of domains, e.g. "relationships, work, parenting," etc., individuals who suffer from these two eating disorders judge their worth almost exclusively in terms of their "shape and weight and their ability to control them" (Fairburn and Harrison 407). Therefore, to the extent that this behavior is successful, it is not seen as a problem by the affected individual. In fact, in regards to anorexia victims, these patients tend to regard their extremely low weight as an "accomplishment rather than an affliction," that this negatively impacts their desire to change (Fairburn and Harrison 407). The principal difference between anorexics and bulimic patients is that the efforts of bulimic patients to restrict food are interspersed with periods of extreme overeating, or "binging," which are defined as "episodes of
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RESEARCH OWNED & PUBLISHED GLOBALLY BY THE PAPERSTORE, INC. 1-800-90-WRITE 2 eating during whic