Eating, Bipolar and Anxiety Disorders

Eating disorders are mental disorders that can have a serious physical complications. There are two main types of eating disorders anorexia and bulimia. These are complex disorders focusing on issues of eating, body weight, body shape. People who intentially starve themselves suffer from an eating disorder called anorexia this disorder usually begins in young people around the time of puberty, involves extreme weight loss due to starving themselves . People with bulimia consume large amounts of food and then rid there bodies of the excess calories by vomiting abusing laxatives, taking enemas or over exercising.

Eating Disorders we think about are, Anorexia Nervosa, and Bulimia Nervosa. Binge Eating Disorder is lesser known however all three can affect males and females (Gray & Zide, 2013). A definition of an eating disorder is an illness that is characterized by irregular eating habits and an obsession with body weight and shape. This leads the person to develop habits surrounding inadequate or excessive food intake. Eating disorders may develop at any age, but typically develops during teen and early adult years. Eating disorders frequently coexist with other disorders such as, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and depression.

Anorexia is an eating disorder that struggles with the fear of gaining weight and refuses to be healthy. Another eating disorder is Bulimia, which is when you overeat followed by forced vomiting and excessive exercise. Binge Eating is one of the most common eating disorders along with Anorexia and Bulimia, Binge eating is when you lose control over one’s eating. All of these common eating disorders all suffer from guilt or depression. “Individuals with bulimia and binge eating eat large amounts of food to reduce stress” (CEDC). They also could have risky behaviors, such as dealing with drugs or alcohol or even death. People with Anorexia or Bulimia are very concerned with being overweight or in other words fat.

It has been found that eating disorders are most common in the western and industrialized culture where food is abundant. This is because these individuals attach a lot of importance to their physical appearance and are willing to do anything to get the dream figure. An eating disorder is not just watching what one eats and exercising on a daily basis but is rather an illness that causes serious disturbances in eating behaviour, such as great and harmful cutback of the consumption of food as well as feelings of serious anxiety about their body shape or mass. They would start to stop themselves to go out anywhere just so that they could work out and burn all of the calories of a meal or snack that they had scoffed earlier. Two of the most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The regular description of a patient with either disease would be a youthful white female, with an upper social standing in a predictably socially competitive environment.

Eating Disorders are, “eating behaviors that develop to deal with problems,” such as, “self-esteem, emotional regulation, fear of growing up and relationship problems” according to Mehler and Andersen (2017) in their book Eating disorders: A guide to medical care and complications.

Many children and adolescents not only express dissatisfaction with their figure, shape and weight, but also exhibit disordered eating behavior, such as binge eating (eating a large amount of food with a sense of lack of control), food restriction, laxative abuse and vomiting. For children and adolescents, eating disorders can overlap in many instances. As an example, some children alternate between periods of anorexia and bulimia. Eating disorders typically develop during adolescence or early adulthood. However, research has shown that they can start in childhood, too. Females are much more vulnerable. Only an estimated 5% to 15% of people with anorexia or bulimia are male. With binge eating, the number rises to 35%

The majority of the population suffering from eating disorders is female, so lets look at the general prototype of a patient. She is generally a teenager, from a middle to upper class background and white. She generally excels at schoolwork and extra-curricular activities, and is often times labeled a perfectionist. How does this differ from a male with eating disorders? Not all that much actually, he also does well in school although sports tend to be overemphasized.

Eating disorders are largely considered to be a "female disease". Statistics seem to validate this perception – of the estimated five million-plus adults in the United States who have an eating disorder, only ten percent are thought to be male ((1)). Many professionals, however, hold the opinion that these numbers are incorrect – it is impossible to base the statistics on anything other than the number of adults diagnosed with eating disorders, and men are much less likely than women to seek help for such a problem ((2)). This means that the male population probably suffers more from eating disorders than the numbers show.

Perhaps as many as one in six cases of anorexia nervosa occur in males, (ANRED http://www.anred.com). Binge eating disorder seems to occur almost equally in males and females, although males are not as likely to feel guilty or anxious after a binge as women do. It is difficult to known exactly how many males have bulimia. Some researchers believe about 15% of all cases of this disorder occurs in men. Clinics and counselors see many more females than males, but that may be because males are reluctant to confess what has become known as a "teenage girl's problem." My health professionals do not expect to see eating disorders in men and may therefore misdiagnose them.

Anorexia statistics show that the disease mostly affects young women. “Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness"( Brown, H. (2010).Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia. New York, NY: Haper Collins Publishers).Only about 10% of all sufferers are male.Statistics on anorexia show that between 1 – 5% of all female adolescents and young women suffer from anorexia. The average age of onset is 17. It is rare, but not unheard of, for children under the age of 10 to have the condition. An older woman can have it as well, although it is usually diagnosed in the teens or twenties.

A recent survey done through NEDA found that as many as 500,000 teens across America have had an eating disorder (“Factors” 1). People with eating disorders are at high risk for depression, suicide and substance abuse. Medical issues caused by these disorders can lead to sudden death (“Factors” 1).

Two of every 100 students will develop or have developed an eating disorder (“Eating Disorders”).

3.5% of women, 2% of men, and up to 1.6% of adolescents” (National Eating Disorders,

Based on Google statistics, there are more than 200,00 cases a year. Anorexia can affect those as little as three years old; however, women from the age range of 10 to 20 years old are most likely to suffer from this disorder, men also struggle with this disorder but it is less common around them. Based on nationaleatingdisorders.org, males represent 25% of individuals with anorexia nervosa, and they are at a higher risk of dying, in part because they are often diagnosed relatively later since many people assume males do not have eating disorders, even though they may present with various symptoms. The symptoms of anorexia include trying to maintain a below-normal weight through starvation or too much

While the assumptions are indeed educated assumptions, they lack credibity when compared to the clean and precise data presented in “Gender Difference in the Prevalence of Eating Disorder Symptoms”. Also, articles specifically about the relationship between males and eating disorders are “rare gems” and after searching for quite a while, I honestly only found two different articles. When the term “eating disorder” is searched in the Munday Library database, 16,220 results appear for the subject of “female” but only 9,314 appear for the subject of “male”.