Feeding and Eating Disorders
Pica
Rumination Disorder
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
Anorexia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa
Binge-Eating Disorder
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder
Unspecified Feeding or Eating Disorder
Anorexia nervosa - is an eating disorder where people starve themselves and express a fear of becoming fat and often think they are fat in spite of being underweight.
Causes for anorexia (and Bulemia) have been broken down into social and cultural, family and individuals.
Social & cultural factors include media, peers influence and cultural notions regarding food abundance and dieting.
Media has also been blamed for images that have been propagated from Barbie to Super Models showing an obsession with slimness. Killing us softly reports the role of advertising on body image and social sterotypes, as does the photoshop effect.CM2016
Societies that have great food abundance also tend to have emphasis on dieting. This may led to a sense of body dissatisfaction.
Often for me getting bigger is the case as with GI Joe (and body dismorphic disorder-see Bigger, Stronger Faster
Peer pressure and 'friendship cliques' may emphasis this more as in the case of pro-ana groups.
Family factors include genetics heritability, parents with eating disorders and also family dynamics. ED families tend "to be enmeshed, intrusive, hostile, and negating" of person's emotional needs and overly concerned about parenting (Polivy & Herman, 2002, p. 194).
There may be insecure/anxious attachment present and a critical family environment involving coercive control.
Mothers tend to display more dissatisfaction with the family system and and critical of their daughters, thinking they should lose weight and describe daughters as less attractive than others, while also being image conscious.
Fathers tend to be more distant, over-involved with work, often prone to alcohol abuse.
Individual factors include body dissatisfaction, possible abuse and teasing, lower self esteem, anxiety and depression as well as experiencing a significant life -stress.
May have obsessive thoughts (similar to OCD) usually around food, strive for perfectionism and may exhibit dissociation. Also often exhibit distorted cognition (bias) around food and body image.
Recently it has been found that "fear centres" in the brain are activated by "food" as a stimulus. As a result neurocognitive and deep brain stimulation is now being used to alter these brain areas to reduce this food-fear response.
Some suggest that it is one way to gain control in one's life and that it becomes self-reinforcing or somewhat addictive behaviour.
Others take an evolutionary perspective where it is seen as having has some type of evolutionary adaptive value in the past, such as the need to stave of puberty and menstruation in order to develop better skills at acquiring a good mate (Anderson & Crawford, 1992).
As such there are distal (ultimate) factors which are believed to be part of the evolutionary past as well as proximal factors that are immediate cues or triggers in the present environment.
Bulimia neurosa is characterized by binge eating and purging. Often with the use of laxatives or self-induced vomiting, feel guilty and frequently have depression, alcoholism and obesity.
Recently Bulemia has been associated with addiction brain centres (dopamine) assocaited with the cycles of binging and purging.
