Eating disorders, which include pro anorexic and bulimia nervosa, are a common psychological illness characterized by exacerbated worry about food, body shape, and weight, and related physical symptoms. More that any other illness, pro anorexia is related to culture, economic, and social factors, being much more common in western industrialized countries that others. This is probably due to the current western stereotype of beauty. Which encourage women (and increasingly also men) to stay thin. Thus gender differences in eating disorders, a mental illness symptoms traditionally associated with women, have been reduced in the past 50 years or so.
The three major characteristic of pro anorexic are:
1) A serious and permanent concern about one’s body shape, weight, and thinness.
2) An active pursuit and maintenance (through vomiting, dieting, or laxatives) of low body weight
3) The absence of menstrual periods in females, indicating a disturbance of hormonal status.
Most pro anorexic individual started by dieting and can be objectively overweight initially, though their dieting efforts will persist after they have lost weight. Another common aspect is the experience low self-esteem. For instance after being bullied at school or breaking up with partners. In later phases of the illness, negative effects on relationships are typical, mostly driven by arguments about not eating.
Like anxiety disorders, pro anorexic may be associated with the experience of anxiety, in particular when pro anorexic individual fail to stop themselves from eating. Conversely, excessive concerns with food that successfully lead to a reduction of food intake will generate personal satisfaction and reduce anxiety. Pro anorexic individuals have been described as quiet, unassertive, anxious, and sexually inexperienced. They also tend to be ambitious and achievement-oriented, but have low self-estem. In any case this mere combination of personality attributes is not enough to predict illness.
Approximately 25% of pro anorexic individual will have long term difficulties, whilst the rest normally recover after one year of treatment. Long term symptoms may range from menstruation disorders in woman to infertility, starvation, and even suicide. It is also not uncommon for anorexic individual to develop bulimia nervosa before fully recovering. Unlike anorexia, bulimia is not associated with actual weight loss and abnormal body weight, but bulimic individuals are significantly more likely than the average person to indulge alcohol and drugs consumption. Again, a combination of both psychotherapy and psychopharmacological drugs constitutes the best treatment for eating disorders
The best way to treat Anorexia - Bulimia is at home with an individual program. This gives people a chance to control their behavior by themselves and not be dependent on a group or a therapist. When we realized this fact, pro anorexic individual start to improve.
Group therapy gives people a dependency on being in the group. They feel OK while they are in the group but loose all sense of self-control when they are at home.
Group therapy provides sufferers with a lot of friends who are also anorexic or bulimic. They get to understand each other very well and develop a "team spirit" attitude. If they get better they need to leave the group and stay on their own. Often they don't want to leave their friends so they stay the same.
Being in the group patients get too many negative ideas from each other. If a young woman has never heard of drinking ipecac to induce vomiting and learns this technique in group therapy, she may try the technique out herself, leaving the group leader or member feeling responsible.
In the group patients often deliberately get worse or engage in more symptoms just to get extra attention from each other or the therapist. This kind of competition always exists in eating disorder groups but on many different levels. Sometimes it can get out of control and cause a lot of harm to some members of the group, the most venerable ones.
Parents of sufferers often think that the doctors or the therapist know the best way to help. But the truth is that parents should be the first and most important people who can really truly help.
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Bowlby Attachment
According to Bowlby attachment earliest research on adult attachment involved studying the association between individual differences in adult attachment and the way people think about their relationships and their memories for what their relationships with their parents are like.
According to Bowlby attachment earliest research on adult attachment involved studying the association between individual differences in adult attachment and the way people think about their relationships and their memories for what their relationships with their parents are like.
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