Affect of Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa - Research Paper Example

?Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa An individual experiences an eating disorder when they undergo severe disturbances in eating behaviors. It is most often noted by extremes such as extraordinary overeating or extreme reduction in overall food intake. Often, sufferers are obsessed about the shape of their body or their weight, thus experiencing extreme distress feelings about the way their body looks. Eating disorders are generally classified into two separate types, Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa. Sir William Gull coined the term Anorexia Nervosa, in the year 1873; he was one of Queen Victoria’s personal physicians. The term originated from the Greek words ‘an’ and ‘orexis’ which means lack of the desire to eat. “The word ‘anorexia’ literally means ‘loss of appetite’” (Watson, 2007, p. 9). With Anorexia Nervosa, the individual usually suffers an extreme amount of distress about becoming overweight, thus reducing their food intake dramatically. This refusal to maintain a healthy body is often mixed with low self-esteem, which in an ordinarily healthy person can be dealt with by power of reasoning, which modifies the way the affected person assesses and thinks about their eating habits and their bodies. Sufferers of Anorexia Nervosa often feel hungry, but avoid eating enough food to sustain themselves properly. On an average, an anorexic individual has about 600 to 800 calories per day, in some cases people also starve themselves. Anorexia nervosa is a severe mental sickness that has a high frequency of comorbidity. It also has the highest mortality rate when compared to any other psychological disorders. People usually tend to develop anorexic symptoms in their early teens. Anorexia is more commonly seen in adolescent girls than boys. However, this does not restrict the fact that women and men of any race, age, cultural and socioeconomic background can be affected by anorexia. Anorexia nervosa occurs in 10 times more females than males. “Females are more likely than males to have anorexia. In fact, about 90 per cent of people with anorexia are females. Studies estimate that one out every 200 women has anorexia. However, males can also have anorexia. Currently, around 10 per cent of people with anorexia are males” (Graves, 2000, p.14). “Anorexia nervosa is a mental disorder that results in an avoidance of eating because of a cluster of specific emotional issues. Symptoms of anorexia nervosa may begin to manifest as early as 9 years of age” (Barry & Farmer, 2002, p. 324). Anorexic symptoms or sign can include steady changes in the appearance and behavior of a person, which occurs over a period of years or even months. Change in dieting behaviors, which include counting of calories and fasting, narrowing down the choices of food or changing food inclinations, like the refusal to eat bad or fatty food, declaring to dislike food that was earlier relished, not eating certain food groups like dairy or meat, and rapid, obvious, and dramatic weight loss. Strict and extreme workout patterns, that are carried out even in bad weather or when the individual is injured or ill. “Most anorexics consider exercise to be their best friend because it is a valuable asset in their pursuit of thinness. For someone who consumes too few calories, though, exercise keeps the body in a continual state of deprivation and actually serves as a method of purging” (Hall & Ostroff, 1999, p. 39). The treatment for anorexia is focused on checking mortality and illness by reestablishing body weight and fixing psychological and dysfunctional thinking and behavior, and treating obsessive thinking and depression, and final avoiding relapse, with the support of a family member or the sufferer’s partner. This treatment involves four main components, bringing and maintaining the person to a weight that is healthy, providing treatment for the various psychological problems related to anorexia, and removing or at least reducing the thoughts and behaviors that end up in disordered eating habits, and avoiding reversion after treatment. According to various studies, medications such as mood stabilizers, antidepressants and antipsychotics may be used in effectively in treating this disorder and are effective in helping patients resolve symptoms such as anxiety and disturbed mood, which coexist with anorexia. Research and studies are still going on to find out how medication can help anorexia patients. “Patients with eating disorders often do not obtain psychiatric treatment or they delay for years before starting treatment. The primary care physician (PCP) has the opportunity to help guide these patients towards psychiatric care and thus affect an eating disorder’s chronicity” (Stern, Herman & Slavin, 2004, p. 171) .There is different types of psychological treatments used to treat anorexic patients. The preference of the patient, motivation, age, the level of bodily compromise, and the type of other related psychological features, influences the kind of psychological treatment used for the patient. In order to prevent and avoid medical complications like osteoporosis, and reduce psychological symptoms like obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression, one of the goals of anorexia treatment is nutrition rehabilitation. Psychotherapy of various forms that include family-based, individual and group may be of great help in tackling mental reasons for the disorder. According to research in therapies that are family based where the parents take responsibility of nurturing their effected child, are the most successful in getting the anorexia patient in gaining normal and healthy body weight. In addition, this is the most effective therapy in improving the moods and eating habits of a person with anorexia. An online intervention program may help some women who are at risk of developing an eating disorder and this illness might be prevented. Psychological treatment should focus on both attitudes of the patients towards shape and weight and eating behavior as well as the broader psychosocial issues, by regularly checking both psychological and physical threats. Often, sufferers from anorexia develop other destructive behaviors, such as cutting or self-mutilation. The may burn themselves, or find other ways to harm themselves to avoid the pain of the emotional roller coaster that they are on with this disorder. They experience a slow but steady withdrawal from social activities, especially ones that include drinking and eating. Activities that are centered around food, for example, cooking and preparing meals for other people but not eating what is prepared, or an unusual interest in recipes, cookbooks, and nutrition. Anorexic individuals also tend to conceal the noticeable changes in their weight and avoid questions about their weight and eating habits. The scarring of knuckles due to digging the throat to stimulate vomiting, which is known as Russell’s sign. Fine and soft hair called lanugo, begins to grow on the body. Behaviors like cutting food into small pieces, the refusal to eat with others, and discarding or hiding food. These individual tend to use diet pills, laxatives, water pills, or ipecac syrup. Anorexic people identify themselves to be overweight even though they are told that they are very thin. They usually complain of being cold due to the loss of body fat, or the poor circulation of blood due to very low blood pressure, in this situation body temperature lowers itself to reserve energy. They avoid family and friends, and become very secretive. They tend to wear loose baggy clothes to hide their weight loss with the fear of confrontation. Sometimes their cheeks may become swollen due to the swelling of salivary glands, which is a result of undue vomiting. Anorexia also leads to abdominal distension and swollen joints. The most obvious and serious health issue related to anorexia is that of starvation. An anorexic individual’s body reacts to the lack of food and nutrition by losing too much weight and a person becomes tremendously thin, they develop dry skin, tender nails and hair, cold intolerance, a low pulse rate, diarrhea, and constipation. Along with this, they can also develop anemia and a lack of menstrual cycle in females. If an anorexic patient is given the right treatment in the early stages of the illness and the patient’s weight and health is well managed by the proper restoration of weight and psychological support, most of the health related complications that arise due to anorexia can be avoided or treated. Several years of research has proved that it is important to treat these patients thoroughly with a multidisciplinary treatment system in a care-continuum model. This treatment includes a day-hospital program, outpatient care, starting with day-and-night inpatient care. Anorexic patients also tend to suffer from severe long-term health consequences, irrespective of the treatment they receive. Some of these long-term health risks include, heart problems like irregular heart rhythms, slowing down of the heart rate, a low blood pressure, and eventually heart failure. Another common health risk among anorexic patients is osteoporosis, both during their illness and in their later life. Anorexic patients also suffer from some mental concerns and psychiatric disorders, they also suffer from clinical depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and personality disorders, these issues can lead to the risk of suicide. Another critical health issue that anorexic women suffer from is infertility, body fat is a requirement for a woman to menstruate, get pregnant, and give birth to a healthy baby. The extreme weight loss in many anorexic females leads to them having no periods or their periods stop temporarily. Amenorrhea, or the cessation of menstruation can be permanent depending on the how long the girl or woman has been anorexic. However, usually the menstruation cycle starts after the woman begins to gain weight. Almost about 80 per cent of anorexic woman regain their capability to conceive once they start gaining weight on the successful treatment of their illness. “Virtually every endocrine system is altered by anorexia nervosa, as it is by starvation. Hormonal concentrations are increased or decreased in predictable fashion, usually proportional to the degree of weight loss” (Emmett, 1985, p. 6). In very severe cases, anorexia can also lead to death. Roughly, one out of every 10 anorexic female who is affected by anorexia dies due to cardiac arrests, medical complications, and starvation. The death rate in anorexic patients is the highest when compared to any other psychiatric ailments. However, there have been several attempts of scientific research to recognize the causes of these complex disorders, the social, behavioral and biological facts still remain mysterious. In an eating disorder a person may just start off by either eating a little larger amounts of food or may reduce the quantity of intake a little when compared to the regular quantity of food. However at some point in time these urges of eating less or more becomes compulsive and the gets out of control, which makes this person either eat a lot less or excessively more quantities of food than usual, then purging it later. This is highly risky for the person, turning into an obsessive disorder of eating either more or less food than is healthy. This leaves the condition open to more research and examination in future studies in order to enable clinicians to better understand, diagnose and treat this disorder. What is understood is that dieting provides sufferers gratification that they are incapable of seeing past, and is typically, in their minds, the only area of their life in which they have success and control, which allows them to achieve higher self-esteem. Dieting is reinforced both positively and negatively by the self-esteem boost and avoidance of their fear of weight gain and avoidance of other social issues they may be experiencing. It is a vicious cycle that is challenging to clinician’s typical treatment protocols. Further study is needed to determine better, more effective treatments in both outpatient and inpatient settings to counter both reinforcements that are maintaining the starvation behavior. Clinicians need to find a way to counter this in order to more accurately treat this disorder. In closing, this leaves the door open in my future for further study, discovery and implementation of techniques for the treatment and prevention of this devastating disorder. References Watson, Stephanie (2007). Anorexia. The Rosen Publishing Group: USA. Graves, Bonnie (2000). Anorexia. Capstone Press: USA. Emmett, Steven Wiley (1985) Theory and Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia: Biomedical, Sociaocultural, and Psychological Perspectives. Brunner/Mazel, Inc: USA. Hall, Lindsey and Ostroff, Monika (1999) Anorexia Nervosa: A Guide to Recovery. Gurze Books: USA. Barry, Patricia D. and Farmer, Suzette (2002) Mental Health and Mental Illness. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins: USA. Stern, Theodore A., Herman, John B., and Slavin, Peter L. (2004). Massachusetts General Hospital Guide to Primary Care Psychiatry. McGraw-Hill Companies: USA. Read More