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Anorexia nervosa was a term that was found by Sir William Gull in the year 1873. This is a kind of mental illness which affects all the individuals and they are possessed with an unknown fear. This unknown fear is near to obsession - an obsession to lose weight and never to gain it. They have a fear of gaining excess weight and they have a lot of biases regarding this and they are constantly obsessed about their looks, figure and stature. This is the disease which has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. This disease occurs in such a way that for every one male who is affected, there are ten females who are victims of this disease.
What are anorexia nervosa eating disorders?
The term anorexia nervosa originates from the Greek word where “a” is a negation word, “n” is a connecting word between vowels, “orexis” is a lack of appetite. Anorexia nervosa is a condition where there are anorexia nervosa eating disorders that are caused due to the insecurity caused in an individual due to an eating disorder. This condition leads the individual to refuse to check the weight. The person begins to feel unnecessarily scared of putting on excess weight and is conscious of his or her growing self image. The person goes into a prejudice regarding eating. This is a mental sickness and comes under the highest psychiatric illnesses.
This disorder affects all ages. It is irrespective of ages, races, and conditions. It is found more in females than in males. The reason why this is caused can be biological and social. This is mainly found in the girls or the women. Sometimes it is seen that boys or men even are victims. The disease normally manifests in teenage. Surveys show that around one percent of the school going children fall victims to this. This has also seen to affect the girls going to college too. During the anorexia nervosa eating disorder, the person finds that his body weight is at least fifteen percent lesser than it should be. The person gets into the habit of purposefully losing weight by avoiding all the foods that are responsible for putting on weight. Fattening foods that involve a lot of exercise and any kind of high calorie food are avoided. Even if they do take it, it is observed that they try to throw it up by self induced vomiting. They also use laxatives or diuretics to stop this. So anorexia nervosa people are always in a fear of gaining weight and they are very preoccupied with eating. It is a kind of disorder where they don’t allow themselves the luxury of eating peacefully. They set rules as to how they would eat it and to what limit they could eat and the amount of exercise they would do after consuming that kind of food. To know what are anorexia nervosa eating disorders are we should understand that it is a condition where people set an “ideal” weight for themselves. This sudden weight loss leads to a lot of unwanted hormonal upsets and the women who have this problem are seen to have a sudden break in their periods or menstrual cycle.
There have been research studies which show that culture plays a great role in promoting the
notion that females should be very thin. Fat is out and thin is in. Thus most of the obese females are discarded and the thin females are considered paragons of beauty. It is this very mindset that leads most of the females towards developing eating disorders. A recent study revealed that the Swedish residents indicate that gender, ethnicity, and socio economic status had a large influence on the incidence of anorexia nervosa eating disorders. It was seen that the non –European countries were the least to be diagnosed with this problem. It has also been noticed that those in a profession which demands that they remain thin tend to get into the anorexia nervosa problem. These professions include dancers, actresses, models etc. These people have their entire profession dependent on their figure. Thus they work themselves into a fit, and end up being obsessed about remaining thin and become anorexic. It has also been seen that those with anorexia nervosa are those who are in contact with a culture that promotes being thin and remaining dainty.
Anorexia nervosa eating disorders has also been related to child sexual abuse where the individual resorts to taking it out on what he eats to rebel against whatever what he feels was unwanted discomfort.
