The Novel ' Gravity Journal, By Gail Sidonie Sobat

There are many different psychological illnesses in the world, each with different causes. While eating is an key function of life, some people may be doing harm to their body with their eating habits. Eating disorders occur when a person has a bad relationship with food and can be deadly. The book Elena Vanishing, by Elena Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle, gives a better understanding of the background of eating disorders and many reviewers are impacted by the book’s vital message.

The Sky Is Falling by Kit Pearson is a good novel. As it deals with many themes that people can relate to like moving to a new place , being an outsider and judging things before you experience them. This book also gives another perspective during world war two. Usually in books about WWII the are either about solider or people escaping/running away from the war. This shows us a person who is passionate about the war and doesn't want to leave the front lines. This book starts off faster paced then slows down a bit while still further developing the plot well. I think that this would be a great novel for high school students as it can be a new and interesting read. This novel can teach the students about history while still focusing on the themes

In certain cases, some adolescents develop an eating disorder. They forget that being healthy is the most important thing during this time of their life. A lot of adolescents go through puberty and if they do not eat properly, it can cause harm to their growth. In the movie, Regina wanted to lose 3 pounds. She did not eat and decided to only eat the protein bars that Caty gave to her. Regina thought the protein bars would help her lose weight. However, adolescents do not know that a healthy diet and exercise can actually help them lost weight. Instead, adolescents choose to become anorexic or bulimic. Anorexia is when an individual “voluntarily undereat and overexericis, depriving their vital organs of nourishment” (Berger, 2008, p. 459). The National Institute of Health states that “Young people with anorexia nervosa, for example, have difficulty maintaining a minimum healthy body weight. Anorexia affects one in every 100 to 200 adolescent girls and a much smaller number of boys” (National Health, 1999). Bulimia

“Dying to be Thin,” produced by PBS, is a documentary that examines the troubles that persons who are affected by eating disorders go through and the constant, daily struggles they face with health and body image. The film tells the story of a number of young women who battled mainly anorexia and bulimia and mixes a variety of ages to give a “during” and an “after” perspective. Many of the women in the video were ballet or some similar type of dancer. Dancers, by their own account, are encouraged to be thin. The issue really came to the forefront after a young ballet dancer from Boston died of heart failure at the young age of 22, with an eating disorder deemed to be the cause. The narrator goes on to introduce more young women and detail the potential illnesses that their eating disorders can cause. Chronic low blood pressure, kidney and liver damage, severe early osteoporosis, and heart failure are all common things seem in patients who suffer from eating disorders. Most patients have dangerously low body weights, body fat percentages, and, often, young women will experience amenorrhea, which is the loss of menstruation. All of the people in the video wanted to be better and were seeking a road to recovery. The video showed though, how difficult that can be since the eating disorders can be so wide ranging and have a number of different root causes. Often patients develop eating disorders as something that they have control over, in a world that they feel is out of their

Did you know that eating disorders have some of the most shocking- not to mention frightening, statistics compared to all other mental disorders? Not only do eating disorders have the highest mortality rate compared to any other mental illness, but over 30 million people of all ages, genders, and races suffer from eating disorders. Although all ages can suffer from eating disorders it is most common among teenagers and women. Many books have been written, displaying the intense mental and obviously physical struggles of this sickness. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson has become very popular over the years as well as Perfect written by Natasha Friend. Eating disorders have also continuously been glamorized in movies and songs. In Civil War Sickness directed by Isa Gueye, she tells about her recovery as well as her struggles

One day she was observed struggling to breathe. The author discovered that Karen had a bottle of tablets when he removed the bed covers. She had taken an overdose in an attempt to commit suicide. She was taken to Deacon’s Hospital Intensive Care Unit to pump out the stomach contents and also to neutralise the effect of the overdose. Karen had declared that she never wanted to go to the hospital should her condition gets worse. When Karen was now aware where she was, she complained to the author who apologised and said he would not let her pass on when he can do something about it. From Intensive Care Unit she was transferred to a private ward for recuperating.

Suicide affects many all around the world and suicide rate keep increasing, making suicide a growing concern. In the film Cake, the main character Claire Bennett develops an odd fascination with the suicide of a woman from her support group. In this paper, I will focus on Claire.

There are multiple ways in which women voluntarily harm themselves, thus including anorexia. American neuroscientist, Thomas Insel, stated that anorexia nervosa is the “most fatal mental disorder” because it “has an estimated mortality rate of around 10 percent”. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines anorexia nervosa as “a serious disorder in eating behavior...characterized especially by a pathological fear of weight gain leading to faulty eating patterns, malnutrition, and usually excessive weight loss”. Those suffering from anorexia are so terrified of gaining weight that they force themselves to not eat just to be thin. Researcher and author for Phycology Today, Emily T. Troscianko, wrote “she desires death, she has of course acknowledged the interconnection of mind and body, and embraced its consequences...she simply doesn’t care anymore whether she lives or dies”. Women are allowing themselves to deprive their bodies of food and die from malnutrition, which is lack of nutrients in the body, just to be skinny. Knowing the effects of a dangerous act can be recognized when the flower dies after Aylmer rids it of any blemishes, yet Georgiana still wants Aylmer to get rid of her birthmark the same way. After Georgiana touches the flower, it “suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency

‘Hard to Swallow’ is an adaptation of an award winning book (and film) “Catherine” which is written by Maureen Dunbar. The book is based upon her daughter’s battle with anorexia and her families struggle in coping and adapting their lifestyle to the illness. Although I knew the main symptoms and effects of anorexia well, the play helped me to see the illness in a different light. The characters in the play were easy to relate to as it was a typical family household, so it was easy for me to see the anorexia take its toll on (not just Catherine) but the whole family and saw how each character coped with the anorexia in different ways.

According to Mirasol Eating Disorder Recovery Center, 20% of people with anorexia nervosa die if they do not get treatment or professional help. This eating disorder is 12 times higher than any cause of death for females 15-24 years old. Furthermore, 10-15% of males have anorexia, so it is not only women who have it. How would you feel? Wanting to know a certain number and maintaining that number so you can feel great about yourself, but slowly hurting or maybe killing yourself by doing it? Elena Dunkle goes through this everyday; knowing that a certain number on a scale will make her feel beautiful. In Elena Dunkle’s memoir, Elena Vanishing, Elena, who has anorexia nervosa, shows the reader the struggles, the fighting and the demons that

Stick Figure by Lori Gottlieb is a first person account of a young girl and her battle with anorexia nervosa. The book is composed of diary entries from when Lori was a young girl, at age eleven. By seeing her personal thoughts and stories from the time when she was battling this disorder gives us a very close look at what drove her obsession with being thin: mainly her mother and peers, who were also obsessed with looking “perfect”. In Stick Figure, we follow Lori all the way from the first time she begins to think she should diet through her eventual hospitalization for the eating disorder. There are many tell-tale signs of the disorder viewed along the way, which are

As we begin to go on an excursion through literature, it is important to understand the concept of what an ethnography is. Ethnography is known to be a descriptive type of work that analyzes culture and customs of individual people. James Clifford has implemented this work into his studies and has influenced many others to do the same. I saw through the books I have read, ethnography makes these books become vivacious for a reader.

“After a traumatic experience, the human system of self preservation seems to go into permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment” (Judith Lewis Herman). The psychoanalyst Lewis Herman describes how encountering agonizing pain causes individuals to become more cautious as a result. The psychoanalytic lens is based on Freudian theories and asserts that “ people’s behavior is affected by their unconscious:...the notion that human beings are motivated, even driven, by desire, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware…” (Tyson 14-15) High schools a place where tragedy are brought upon people, but their voices aren’t heard. Melinda, a high school freshman, is the protagonist in Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak.

Employing her essay with key terms like body image, anorexia, and bulimia among other disorders, the essayist has written her piece rife with appeals to pathos to define them; the essay’s introduction carries her readers into a girl’s mind who struggles with her appearance

In “Wanting To Die”, Anne Sexton illustrates vividly an analogy that compares one’s desire to commit suicide and drug addiction. Though this poem may initially seem to revolve around the themes of death and suicide, there are several examples in the poem that can be referenced to drug addiction and the intentions of the drug user. In general, the tone of this poem is luridly depressing as it produces an imagery that is painstakingly dark and morbid. It encapsulates the reader within the mind of the suicidal thinker through specific personifications of suicide and death. Sexton also utilizes metaphors and similes in this poem to describe how suicide conducts a mind of its own which engages in