Background History of Anorexia Nervosa

Incidences of Anorexia Nervosa have appeared to increase sharply in the USA, UK and western European countries since the beginning of the 60s (Gordon, 2001). The increasing prevalence of the disease has led the World Health Organisation to declare eating disorders a global priority area within adolescent mental health (Becker et al. 2011). Anorexia has in many ways become a modern epidemic (Gordon, 2000) and with a mortality rate of 10% per decade (Gorwood et al. 2003), the highest of any mental disorder (Bulik et al. 2006), it is an epidemic that social and biological scientists have been working tirelessly to understand.

Dr. Levenkron talks about Anorexia Nervosa as a pathological distortion of today’s society of being “Fashion-model thin.” This source is reliable because it is told from a doctor's/psychotherapists perspective of the disease. It informs and broadens my research on the pathological aspect of the disease. Dr. Steven Levenkron uses case studies and specific strategies to explain and help cure the disease.

With Anorexia Nervosa, there is a strong fear of weight gain and a preoccupation with body image. Those diagnosed may show a resistance in maintaining body weight or denial of their illness. Additionally, anorexics may deny their hunger, have eating rituals such as excessive chewing and arranging food on a plate, and seek privacy when they are eating. For women, they go through immediate body changes from abnormal to no menstruation periods and develop lanugo all over their bodies. Characteristics of an anorexic individual also consist of extreme exercise patterns, loosely worn clothing, and maintain very private lives. Socially, to avoid criticism or concern from others, they may distant themselves from friends and activities they once enjoyed. Instead, their primary concerns revolve around weight loss, calorie intake, and dieting. In regards to health, many will have an abnormal slow heart rate and low blood pressure, some can develop osteoporosis, severe dehydration which can result in kidney failure, and overall feel weak (Robbins, 27-29). It has been reported that Anorexia Nervosa has one of the highest death rates in any mental health condition in America (www.NationalEatingDisorders.org).

Backholm, K., Isomaa, R., & Birgegård, A. (2013). The prevalence and impact of trauma history in eating disorder patients. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 41-8. Doi: 10.3402/ejpt.v4i0.22482.

Doctors are now comparing anorexia to a biological disease that may be initiated by environmental factors, such as, stress and trauma. The reason these independent variables cannot be tested is because the dependent variables in this case would be genes and

Anorexia was introduced into the world around 138 year ago. An esteemed English physician named Sir William Withey Gull introduced it at the Clinical Society of London. The disorder reached public awareness around the 1970’s. It was very popular in the upper class. There are two major types of anorexia. The restriction type and binge eating/purging type. The restriction type is when the person restricts their food intake on their own and does not engage in the other type. The other type, binge eating/purging, is when the person self-induces

These acts of exclusion are classified as the earliest known methods of bulimia. Thorough studies based on the illnesses were not conducted until 1689, when the first case of anorexia supposedly appeared. The case was disregarded, as religion in that time period promoted fasting over a course of days. Soon after, however, anyone found to be abstaining from nourishment was convicted of witchcraft and burned. Those drastic acts hindered the spread of anorexia, but only for a short period of time. Between the years 1970-1980, anorexia and other eating disorders spread like a wild fire across America and, as a result, the world (Cowley).

Anorexia nervosa is a disorder that in the majority of cases will start when the patient is a teenager. The mean age at onset is figured to be about 17 years of age. The distribution of cases appears 'to be asymmetrical with a skewness towards the higher ages (Theander, 1996).

Eating disorders are becoming more common in the Modern Era. Millions of people all across the U.S. are being diagnosed with an eating disorder. Each eating disorder that an individual can be diagnosed with has different characteristics. When questioning if someone has an eating disorder, the individual typically begins to eat differently than usual if even at all and cares more about their appearance and body weight. There are different stages to one’s illness that determines the severity that the illness has on an individual. The DSM-5 has found the “anorexia nervosa is a mental and physical disease that was recognized in France in the 19th century, usurped for England by Queen Victoria’s physician and subsequently

Anorexia nervosa is a disorder which heightens the ideas of fear in an individual, particularly the phobia of gaining weight. People with the disorder pine to achieve a body that is unattainable, leading to obsessions about food. Fear is a driving emotion for the disorder, and often it is this emotion which causes prolonged suffering. This paper will go over the DSM-5’s diagnostic criteria, the prevalence of the disorder, the circumstances of onset, etiology, and finally a case example. The case example will illustrate how the disorder can be long-lived and affect relationships. Having a clinical understanding of anorexia nervosa allows for persons outside of the disorder the ability to relate to the victims.

Women in this era restricted their caloric intake not to necessary lose weight, but to imitate models of Jesus Christs and saints, such as St. Francs of Assissi. In 1689, the characteristics of Anorexia Nervosa were recognized as a medical condition in a publication authored by a notable English physician, Richard Morton (Habermas, 2015). The disorder further got under the medical spotlight when William Gull, a medical doctor, published ‘Anorexia Hysterica’ in 1868, a seminal paper that provided detailed descriptions of cases and treatment options. In 1952, AN was recognized as a Psychiatric disorder and was consequently categorized as a Psychophysiological Reaction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I); it was later moved to the Special Symptoms-Feeding Disturbance category in the second edition. A drastic increase in the number of AN cases noted in the 1960s and 1970 was largely attributed to the idolization of the thin female frame; sadly, Obsession with the body image became a motivating factor to fast excessively. Because of advances in the firld of neuroscience, AN is now considered a biologically based mental

Anorexia nervosa is an illness which predominately attacks teenage girls or women in their early adult years. When they look into a mirror, they don’t see athin body; they see a revoltingly overweight body. Anorexia is a mental illness and must be treated. It is also a physical illness, an illness similar to starvation. Anorexic young women may feel dizzy and tired constantly, may lack emotional warmth, develop a gloomy personality, the everlasting symptoms of this bizarre suffering are never-ending. Though its symptoms are endless, but its cause? Veiled.Some claim that the media has a vigorous affluence on society, other prevail that it is down to free will of the

As the term "anorexia nervosa" did not exist until 1873” (The first anorexic). In the western world one of the first accounts of anorexia nervosa was during “the 12th and 13th centuries, most famously Saint Catherine of Siena who denied herself food as part of a spiritual denial of self” (A History of Eating Disorders). Most cases of anorexia had to do with fasting as a religious or spiritual experience. However for the women of the Victorian period being thin had transformed and became a way for them to feel successful instead of powerless. It wasn’t till 1970 that the disorder was able to reach the public as it wasn’t just the upper-class that was suffering from anorexia. Again anorexia evolved into the "twentieth-century women progressively idealized the lean, almost 'tubular' body type, deprived of the symbolic emphasis of fertility and motherhood. The thinness of the 'new woman' expressed her sexual liberation and rejection of the traditional female role" (Bremer, J.). Whereas before woman needed to look healthy and capable of having and raising children, now women were aiming to achieve independence the need to be those thing were

Hudson, Hirripi, Pope and Kessler’s (2007) research indicates that the average onset of anorexia nervosa is 19 years old, but can develop as young as 14 years old, and women are more likely to develop anorexia nervosa than men. Some studies indicate that anorexia affects whites more than Hispanics, African Americans and Asians; however it crosses cultures and socially diverse populations (APA, 2013). According to the DSM 5, Anorexia nervosa predominantly occurs in developed, high-income countries such as in the United States, as well as in many European countries, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Individuals who present with weight concerns that develop eating and feeding disorders varies substantially across cultural contexts. One study indicated that that “the ‘spread’ of Western values regarding slimness (fat phobia) is primarily responsible for the development of anorexia nervosa in non-Western societies” (Rieger et al., 2001). Rieger et al (2001) also looked at the medical records of Asian women and found the absence of fat phobia; the rationale for dietary restriction was commonly related to other external factors. The WHO (2004) also reports that female athletes, ballet students, fashion models and culinary students are at risk of developing anorexia nervosa; unhealthy dieting and society’s

Because Anorexia Nervosa cases death rate is one of highest in the category of mental ailments, the same is posing serious health problem to the general public health in the United States. In the United States public there is a two hundred percent growth in the reported cases since its official inception. Since 1970 followed by two decades the same eating disorder was prevalent mainly with the upper and middle class women, but now the recent studies have proved it is common across women irrespective of their social status in the United States. The same disorder can cause major serious damage to the cardio vascular, digestive, and dental system causing even sudden fatality. Baratta (2011) stated that first reported fatality due to the same disorder dates back to 383 A.D. It was also specified that most of the Anorexics were female sages. To clarify, “During medieval times, female saints and mystics were miraculously able to survive without food and appetite” (p.13). The same keeps us thinking whether Anorexics are really supernatural or not.