Eating Disorders

History Questions

• Do you worry about how much you weigh?
• What do you think of your body/weight?
• Do you diet?
• Do you ever make yourself sick after a meal?

Anorexia Nervosa

• Low weight not due to other illness 
• Persistent refusal to maintain weight (cf depression – don‟t want to eat). Obsession with food, weight and thinness
• 90% female, usual onset from 11 – 19 years
• Aetiology:
  • Media message: thin = beautiful
  • Already painfully aware of body image due to changes in puberty
  • Stressful life situations
  • Genetics
  • Family dynamics
  • Something they can have control over when they don‟t have control in other areas of their lives
  • Failure to achieve weight control ® ¯sense of failure ® try harder
• Signs:
  • Deliberate self-starvation
  • Fear of gaining weight
  • Denial of hunger
  • Constant exercising
  • Self perception of being fat
  • Absent or irregular periods
  • May purge (vomiting, laxatives) 
• Complications: starvation, heart, osteomalacia, ¯fertility

Bulimia

• Purging a more dominant feature
• Don‟t usually loose so much weight