Anorexia nervosa eating disorder

Anorexia nervosa is the best known of the eating disorders. It is found with greatest frequency among middle-to-upper-class white female adolescents. An eating disorder is defined as a disturbance in eating behavior that jeopardizes a person's physical or psychological health. The problem may affect males, but that is uncommon. This eating disorder appears to be related very strongly to what we might call the female psychology as it is experienced and manifested in our society. Anorexia nervosa is addressed by different commentators in different ways, and often they do so in a way that adapts the fact of the disorder to their particular area of concern so that in effect, each commentator can see in the disorder what he or she believes is most important. Medical personnel see the disorder as a medical issue with biological roots. Psychologists see it as a manifestation of mental tensions and concerns. Feminists may see it as evidence that our society is sexist and that it imposes a body image on women that is impossible to achieve and that has damaging psychological and medical consequences. Some theorists see in the disorder evidence of family dysfunctions. In truth, each of these perspectives can have some validity, for the problem is complex and involves multiple dimensions in the lives of sufferers.

Anorexia nervosa is the best known of the eating disorders. It is found with greatest frequency among middle-to-upper-class white female adolescents. The disorder

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in a life that may be seen as "out of control." In discussing the origins of anorexia nervosa, Brumberg refers to those who see the problem caused by a biochemical disorder--the medical model--and those who see the problem as caused by culture, a position popular with feminists. Brumberg sees psychological and family factors as prime causes. She notes that the malady is not a modern one but has a long history and that the issue emerged in the Victorian era, long before the pervasive cultural imperative for a thin female body (though given the use of tight corsets and similar "thinning" devices at the time, it is not clear that body image did not have something to do with the disorder even then). For Brumberg, though, the origin can be found in family attitudes toward food and the act of eating as a family group, and show notes that food was used to express love in the household of the time: Offering attractive and abundant meals was the particular responsibility and pleasure of middle-class wives and mothers. In America the feeding of middle-class children, from infancy on, had become a maternal concern no longer deemed appropriate to delegate to wet nurses, domestics, or governesses (Brumberg, 356). Daughters were in eff

Category: Medical - A