Anorexia: A Mental Illness
Anorexia: A Mental Illness
Introduction
Anorexia Nervosa is a common eating disorder among girls and
women. It is also currently being associated with being considered a mental
disorder rather than something you chose to do to yourself or solely blaming
it on an outside cause such as society.
Literature Review
Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder where one will not eat or
seriously reduce their intake of food because they have an extreme fear of
being fat. In todays society you have the average woman weighing 140lbs
at 54. Then you flip through a magazine and you see beautiful models
averaging 511 and weighing 117lbs (Schacter 2014). Society can be a
major cause of why women today will look in the mirror and believe they are
fat even though they are not.
According to Trisha Gura, Scientific American Journalist, it is not right to
blame anorexia solely on an outside cause such as society. Once someone
crosses the line of thinness and into emaciation (abnormally thin), they have
now also caused problems with the brains reward circuitry. They no longer
experience delight or happiness in lifes pleasures. For example one may not
feel excitement in winning the lottery, because the part of your brain that
tells you it is time to express an emotion for a reward does not work correctly
anymore. Gura explains that researchers did a study to see how women who
Anorexia: A Mental Illness
had once experienced anorexia would react to reward and losses vs. how
women who had never experienced anorexia would react. The previously
anorexic women did not celebrate their wins like the control group of women
did. Though their brain activity remained similar there was one difference.
The control group of women with appropriate responses to winning showed a
region in their brain light up called the anterior ventral striatum. This part of
the brain reflects the process of immediate rewards (Gura 2007). This is just
one sign of anorexias mental ailments.
Anorexia is also looked at as an addiction. Someone undergoing
anorexia may experience anxiety and perfectionism. A person experiencing
this has the main goal of perfecting ones own body and mastering the art of
weight loss (Gura 2007). People starving themselves have said that it
actually makes them feel better and gives them more energy. To someone
that has a mental illness such as Anorexia, their brain overrides the painful
feeling of starvation and replaces it with the feeling of accomplishment. But
in reality nothing is ever going to be rewarding enough to someone battling
anorexia, they will constantly look at their reflection and see themselves as
repulsive and overweight, even if they have gotten to the point of
emaciation, it will never be good enough.
Serious developments that may arise from anorexia are the following:
1. Low blood pressure and irregular heart rhythms which can result in
heart failure (Mayo Clinic 2014).
2. Anemia: causing weakness and breathlessness
Anorexia: A Mental Illness
3. Bone loss which can lead to osteoporosis. Many women do not recover
lost bone mass after treatment.
4. Suicide
Application
As a former dancer I have constantly been around the pressure to be
thin and I may have made some poor decisions on eating habits, but nothing
extreme. Statistics say that most cases of anorexia arise from girls in high
school. But for me personally I have never felt more self-conscious about
myself as I do now. Now that I am 22 years old and I have been out of the
dancing scene for a couple years now, I am at the average height and
weight. Though I am still an average sized woman I am 15 or so pounds
heavier than I was my freshman year of college and I worry about running
into people I went to school with at the pool, I obviously dont have the same
physique I had while dancing five hours a day in high school and my early
years of college. I dont think I will ever fall into the depths of anorexia but I
understand how easy it can be to fall into that lifestyle. Not feeling like you
are thin enough for society is extremely depressing and it can be devastating
to your self-esteem if you are not meeting the standards.
Conclusion
Anorexia does arise from the pressure to be what society portrays as
the perfect woman. But being able to understand that anorexia is not just a
choice, but also arises from a mental state of depression can really help to
understand someone that is battling anorexia much better. Anorexia is
Anorexia: A Mental Illness
something that needs to be caught in early stages because many of its
consequences cannot be recovered.
Reference
Gura, T. (2007). Addicted to Starvation. American Mind, 19(3), 1-1.
Mayo Clinic Staff. (2014, December 30). Anorexia Nervosa. Retrieved June 12, 2015,
from http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseasesconditions/anorexia/basics/complications/con-20033002
Schacter. (2014). Emotion and Motivation. In Psycology (3rd ed., p. 334).
Macmillan Higher Education Company.
