Anorexia Nervosa: an Annotated Bibliography

Bibliography: Holly Brubach “Starved to Perfection” New York Times; April 17, 2007 This article describes how anorexia is starting to become as another occupational hazard. Models need to be stick figures to be able to walk down the runway, as to football and baseball players use steroids to get big and strong. Most young woman today is dieting. The models are just experts at it. Author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body”, Courtney E. Martin says seven million American girls and women have eating disorders, and up to seventy million worldwide. In nineteen ninety five, thirty four percent of high school age girls in the U.S. thought they were overweight. In 2007 ninety percent of them think they are overweight. A professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, Bruch wrote about cases when the anorexia outbreak happened in the nineteen seventies. Anorexia didn’t get diagnosed until the nineteen eighties. Martin would have us eat and not think about it. We would focus our attention on something else. But in back of our minds we will be thinking about food. In the past three decades we have noticed that men try to get bigger while women try to get skinnier, as to make more room for them in the world. Pamela M. Prah “Eating Disorders” CQ Researcher; February 10, 2006 Anna Westin from Minnesota tried to hide her eating disorder by wearing baggy clothes because she didn’t want to reveal her skeleton like body. It eventually killed her at age twenty one by committing suicide, battling anorexia for five years. Her mother says “she knew she had an eating disorder. She hated it and wanted to be free of it. That drove her to suicide.” Anorexics see themselves as fat but they are usually very thin. They refuse to eat to maintain a normal weight, or they just eat to survive. It has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, with death often caused by suicide. A lot of physicians have seen that eating disorders have been appearing in younger girls. It’s not surprising these days to see a twelve year old with an eating disorder. Among U.S. women, about one percent has anorexia. People that participate in activities that require a lean appearance are also in danger of an eating disorder. People, who do try to find help, can be cured in five to seven years. It can cost up to thirty thousand a month. Both mental and physical problems occur and that’s why it is so costly. Many victims also have drug and alcohol problems. American Psychiatric Association recognized anorexia has a mental disorder in 1980. Insurance companies do not pay for anorexia treatment, which can cause suicide if someone’s not treated or starvation. Social pressure has become an issue with anorexia. Young children strive to be thin because they see famous people who they look up to being thin. C. Zanker “Anorexia Nervosa and the Body Image Myth” Wiley InterScience 2009 Bryan Lask and Ian Frampton justify the behaviors of anorexia. The patients use weight manipulation tactics to fabricate weight lost. Zanker agrees that body weight, in conjunction with various physiological and metabolic measures provides an important indication of both physical risk and recovery of anorexia. Starvation can lead to compulsive behaviors or compulsions could appear. Anorexia can cause severe anxiety and might make people always on edge because they are struggling to maintain their weight. In Zanker’s teens he was treated with medication and re-feeding. He was given no psychiatric help. If he did fail weight gain, he was threatened to be fed by a feeding tube. He wanted help tackling with his emotions and fears. He was phobic of gaining weight and knew he had to, he was aware of that. Thomas Cash described body image as in cognitive, behavioral and emotional elements are central to the psychopathology of anorexia. An easy target to blame for young people’s anorexia is the mass media, magazine, television, and internet images of “the perfect bodies”. Young girls see women on television or in magazines with their skinny bodies, and want to look just like them. Cash doubt that the probability of the media that is causing anorexia is any greater than the probability of alcohol commercials are causing alcoholism. Zanker was disgusted by the taste and smell of some foods when he was a child. He made himself think if he ate them he would vomit. When he started to have anorexia he was confused about where he was in life and where he’d fit in. He was hitting puberty and he was afraid to grow up. He was afraid of sexual relationships because he was molested as a young child. He felt so abnormal that he convinced himself to start exercising and not eating to make himself normal. From his personal experiences of anorexia he suggests that the illness is more powerfully related to identify than to “body image”. Carol Lawson “Anorexia: It’s not a New Disease” New York Times; December 8 1985 Before the nineteen seventies, anorexia was never heard of by most people. Most people did not know of people starving themselves to get thin. Anorexia has been around for more than a century. It was named and identified in the eighteen seventies. Joan Jacobs Brumberg says, “Anorexia is lack of appetite, and anorexia nervosa is lack of appetite from nervous causes. It was widely regarded as a form of hysteria. In 19th century, doctors did not find anorexia nervosa uncommon. Many agreed they had seen it.” Today it affects people in all types of strata societies. In Victorian era it was ailment of the middle and upper middle classes. Dr. Brumberg says, “In the 19th century there was a certain emotional and material privileging of girls. In a culture of affluence, food and eating become very important to people.” Dr, Brumberg said there are no statistics on how many people suffered from anorexia nervosa in the 19th century. Most people with anorexia are in their teens. Nine percent of girls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen have anorexia. They deliberately starve twenty percent of their body. Twenty percent of people that suffer from anorexia die from the irreversible effects of chronic starvation. Anorexia today is increased by people on the television being overly skinny. It enforces behavior of young children by exercising and not eating daily. It is viewed as an emotional disorder.