Eating Disorders Assessment

First, I took the “Do I have an Eating Disorder Quiz?”, which intended to measure any extreme symptoms of eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia. Next I took the Grief quiz, designed to help people understand if they are affected by complicated grief stemming from the death or loss of a loved one. I picked these assessments out initially because they contained more questions, and are both directly related to my life.

In modern American culture, health and food are a serious issue. We have all heard how to eat healthy: how many calories is too much, which foods to eat, which foods to avoid, and so on. However, very few people eat a truly healthy diet but some people have eating habits so unhealthy that it is considered a psychiatric disorder. These disorders are classified as eating disorders. Ever since the middle of the twentieth century, eating disorders have been increasingly more common (Barlow & Durand, 2015). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013), eating disorders include a wide range of symptoms and fall under these classifications: pica, rumination disorder,

Eating disorders are one of the most prevalent mental disorders in the United States. Although this disease is typically viewed as a female disorder, males are greatly affected and may go undiagnosed and untreated due to the attached stigma. Thus, it is important to understand the risk factors associated with the development of eating disorders in males. These risk factors include: athletic involvement, sexual orientation, pre-morbid obesity, and adverse childhood experiences. Eating disorder type and symptom presentation also varies between males and females. Males typically do not meet the criteria to be categorized as Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa, causing their condition to be classified as Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Symptom presentation is likely to include binge eating and excessive exercise rather than restrictive eating, purging, or other compensatory methods commonly seen in the female population. Several eating disorder assessments are available for use in clinical practice, most of which have been geared toward the female gender. New assessments, such as the Eating Disorder Assessment for Males, have been developed recently to try to hone in on the typical male symptomatology and their psychological processes. Prompt treatment of eating disorders, regardless of gender, is necessary to prevent the development of medical and psychological comorbidities. This process cannot begin until the diagnosis has been made; therefore, additional

Many may see someone who has an eating disorder as someone who wants 'attention,' while disregarding all of the several factors that play a part in causing someone to take this path in their life. The list of causes goes on and on, yet the basics are right under our noses. Vaguely speaking, biological factors, psychological factors, and environmental factors all take a place on the stand for being causes ("Disorder Hope").

The EDI, as a multifaceted instrument and as one of the most widely used assessment tools, provides a standardized rating scale, which is used internationally (Garner, 1984). Eating disorder specialists frequently use EDI with adolescents who experience symptoms and present psychological features of eating disorders. According to the user’s manual, EDI-3 asses associated risk factors and outcomes of treatment and it can be used to assess the DSM-IV-TR diagnoses of Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (Garner, 2004). However, the EDI-3 does not assess Binge Eating Disorders (Atlas, 2007). The EDI-3 is appropriate to use with females ages 13-53 (2007). In addition, EDI is used internationally not only in clinical settings but in research too (Clausen, Rosenvinge, Friborg, & Rokkedal, 2011). EDI is constructed to inventory the severity of eating disorders (Garner, 1984).

Norm group reliability was assessed across groups (N = 1980) female patients (US adult (n = 983), international clinical population (n = 662), and a US adolescent clinical population (n = 335)) who already met the diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder (Atlas, 2007). Across the three normative groups, and diagnostic categories (ANR, ANB, BN, EDNOS) a composite T-score

The brain is a changing part of the body. During a lifetime, many think that their bodies are not the way society says they should be. Because of the disfigured views of their bodies, people begin to develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. According to Mental Health by Jennifer Hurley, symptoms of anorexia include an unhealthy and unnatural fear of gaining weight, even if the person affected is at a stable body weight. The book continues on by saying that this eating disorder is a mental disorder that may be caused by academic, social, and family problems (Hurley 33). Anorexia nervosa can be treated by therapy.

Eating disorders are becoming more common in the United States every day. The medical field should direct more focus toward diagnosing and treating eating disorders. Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder (BED), and other psychological disorders are involuntary, and often go ignored or undiagnosed. These disorders have many dangerous medical side effects, and often are not diagnosed properly. With the numbers increasing every year, eating disorders have become a serious problem for many people besides just teenage girls.

Thousands of people in this world struggle with eating disorders. “Gina battled bulimia for seven years—struggling on her own in secret—before she finally opened up to her mother. Gina wrote her a long letter explaining her shame and embarrassment, and gave her mother a book about how to deal with someone with an eating disorder,” (“Eating Disorder Treatment and Recovery”). This is a big problem all around the world, but it can be solved. To help people with eating disorders around the world people need to work together to educate people, motivate them to change, and to create a healthy body image.

Academy for Eating Disorder states that, eating disorders are characterized by a recurring pattern of unhealthy eating attitudes resulting to problems regarding health, emotional, and social problems. Alternatively, ED is also defined as an insistent disturbance of one`s eating attitudes with intent to control weight and actually affects their health negatively (Walsh and Fairburn, 2002). Eating Disorder is usually common to women, but is not limited to them. Both genders, male and female, in various ages can also suffer from it. Now that male population are openly expressing vanity, there are now more than twice as many men having ED today, than there was ten years ago.

In honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness week, I decided to open up about part of my past. I mentioned in my last post that I had struggled with an eating disorder, and I decided to further explain the thoughts that used to run through my mind- or rather, the lies that I told myself when I was in the midst of this.

Subjective: Client appeared to be upset and anxious when she first entered the room for her session. While address the incident which happened during class the clients’ affect appeared to be flat and she displayed little emotion. This is different from last week session because the client was engaging during the session and appeared to be in a good mood at the beginning of the session.

Physical exercise is inarguably healthy for the normal body functions as well as the overall good physical health. Consequently, many people take exercises to achieve the ultimate benefit of good health. However, a compulsive or compensatory need to take exercise could be an indicator of underlying problem of disordered eating habits. It pragmatic to monitor one’s exercising habits in order to increase chances of early detection of any underlying disordered eating habits.

Eating disorders are generally characterized by any range of abnormal or disturbed eating habits. The previous DSM editions referenced eating disorders throughout the text, whereas the DSM-5 contains all of the eating disorders in one chapter titled, “Feeding and Eating Disorders”. Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa have endured some changes in the revision of the DSM-5, while there were additional disorders added. Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder and binge eating disorder were two disorders that have been introduced in the DSM-5. The severity of eating disorders is also a new system of classification which ranges from mild, moderate and severe.

Throughout the semester I have really enjoyed this class and I have learned a lot. The Ted talk that we watched that was all about the female superheroes is something that I thought was very interesting and at the same time very disturbing. I think that female superheroes should be sold along with male superheroes. I think that it's an outrageous thing and something that I did not know until watching this Ted Talk. I think that both men and women superheros should be sold together. Why hasn't this issue been brought up before? Little girls or boys going to pick out their favorite female superhero just like they are able to pick out their male favorite male superhero. I think it's something that is a bigger problem that people are not paying