Eating Disorders A vast amount of research has been done on the subject of eatingdisorders and their causes. Many eating disorders have been proven to emergeduring adolescence and often serve as the foundations to more seriousproblems like anorexia and bulimia. This essay will explore the development ofeating disorders in adolescent girls. It will show that these disorders are closelyconnected to the biological and psychosocial changes that occur during theadolescent period.
Many teen girls suffer with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder in whichgirls use starvation diets to try to lose weight. They starve themselves down toskeletal thinness yet still think that they are overweight. Bulimia, meanwhile, is adisorder in which young women binge on food and then force themselves tovomit. They also often use laxatives to get food out of their system.
All of theseyoung women who suffer from this problem are considered to suffer from apsychiatric disorder. While the causes are debatable, one thing that is clear isthat these young women have a distorted body image. (Wolf, pp. 214-216)What is extremely alarming is that the current thin ideal for women inWestern society, which is unattainable for all but a very small percentage of thepopulation, is compounding this problem. It is a very serious issue whensomeone’s body shape is determined by genetic disposition and yet they try toalter it to fit some kind of imaginary ideal of how a person should look. Thus, one of the most serious problems is that female nature is not whatsociety says it should be.
Some researchers theorize that anorexia is a youngwoman’s way of canceling puberty. Since they lack body fat, anorexics don’t gettheir periods and often lose their sexual characteristics such as public hair. Theyremain, in other words, little girls. There is also the complex issue of womenfeeling that by having an eating disorder they are finally in control of somethingin their life. This may sound strange, but much research has shown that womenwho have been abused or neglected in their childhoods develop these problemsof control.
(Attie and Brooks-Gun, pp. 70-71). Studies suggest that eating disorders often begin in early tomid-adolescence. They are directly connected to pubertal maturation and theincreases in body fat that occurs during this phase. These biological changesare associated with increased dieting and unhealthy behaviours in earlyadolescence. This problem is aggravated by various problems, includingnegative body image, which has a close association with weight, perfectionismand depression.
Family and socialization also play significant roles. It has beenfound, for instance, that mothers with girls with eating disorders are often criticalof their daughters’ weight and physical appearance. Families with adolescentswho have eating disorders are also often characterized by enmeshment,overprotectiveness, rigidity and lack of conflict resolution. This is connected tothe “control” issue mentioned previously. Interestingly enough, girls who aremore involved in mixed-sex social activities and dating boys are also more likelyto exhibit disordered eating tendencies. (Attie and Brooks-Gun, pp.
70-71). Thus, eating disorders must be studied in the context of what certainindividuals face during their developmental stage, or what they may havesuffered in childhood. In general, a combination of the pubertal phase of thefemale body, the loosening of the individual’s ties to parents, and thedevelopment of a stable and cohesive personality structure play profound rolesin this process. Psychologists Ilana Attie and J. Brooks-Gun have done somework on this issue.
They considered eating disorders within the so-called”developmental” perspective, which examines the emergence of eating disordersin adolescent girls as a function of pubertal growth, body image, personalitydevelopment, and family relationships. The two psychologists examined 193white females and their mothers during the former’s middle-schooled years(13. 93 years) and then two years later. They set out to see how much thedevelopment of eating problems represented a mode of accommodation topubertal change.
Taking a “developmental” approach, the authors studied theimpact of the pubertal transition relative to other aspects of the femaleadolescent experience. (Attie and Brooks-Gun). These researchers emphasized one very significant fact: that as girlsmature sexually, they accumulate large quantities of fat. For adolescent girls,this growth in fat tissue is one of the most dramatic physical changes associatedwith puberty, adding an average of 11 kg of weight in the form of body fat. Thisincrease in fat is, in turn, directly connected to desires to be thinner.
(Attie andBrooks-Gun, p. 7O) This reality is due to the fact that, as Attie and Brooks-Gundemonstrate, female body image is intimately bound up with subjectiveperceptions of weight. Prepubescent girls who perceive themselves asunderweight are most satisfied while the opposite occurs for those who areoverweight or perceive themselves to be such. Thus, Attie and Brooks-Gunfound that dieting emerged as the female body developed, and that is was afunction of the body image transformation occurring at puberty. (Attie andBrooks-Gun, p.
71)Aside from the pubertal changes that the authors found significant in thisissue, family relationships were also detected to influence the emergence ofeating disorders. Families that set high standards for achievement, gave littlesupport for autonomy, and blurred interpersonal boundaries left adolescent girlswith deficits in their self-esteem. (Attie and Brooks-Gun, p. 71) Once again, asmentioned earlier, it makes sense in a very complex way that young girls whohave been abused in this way end up “controlling” things that are ultimately notgood for them. For instance, a young girl who was made to feel powerless insome ways in her family (i.
e. sexual or physical abuse) may end up feeling asense of individual identity if she can “control”, for example, when she vomitsand when she does not. Now, at least, she can have control over something inher life. Personality factors were also found to contribute to the development ofeating disorders.
Characteristics such as perfectionist strivings, feelings ofineffectiveness, depressive symptoms and self-regulatory deficits were seenfrequently in patients with eating disorders. (Attie and Brooks-Gun, p. 71) The authors found, for instance, that girls who early in adolescence feltmost negatively about their bodies were more likely to develop eating problemstwo years later. (Attie and Brooks-Gun, p. 76).
Thus, overall, Attie and Brooks-Gun found that eating problems emergedin response to physical changes of the pubertal period. Personality variablesentered this problem, but only at a later stage. Attie’s and Brooks-Gun’s findingssuggest that body shape becomes a primary focus and that efforts to controlweight intensify during the middle-school years. In other words, the rapidaccumulation of body fat that is part of the female experience of puberty oftenfunctions as a triggering effect, in the sense that it starts the attempt ofweight-loss diets.
Attie’s and Brooks-Gun’s study did, of course, have its limitations. Theauthors themselves admitted that their investigation focused only on a sample ofwhite girls from upper-middle-class families. Yet most evidence has suggestedthat bulimia nervosa is more prevalent in middle-and-upper middle class whitegirls, although there is evidence suggesting that eating disorders are increasingin other ethnic and social class groups, especially for girls who experience morepressure to acculturate to white, middle-class standards. (Graber, Brooks-Gun,Paikoff and Warren, p. 823) In other words, what we see here is that the valuesand ideals held by the dominant society are an important issue as well. Recentstudies have shown us that adolescent girls in competitive environments thatemphasize weight and appearance experience increased social pressures tomeet the thin ideal.
(Attie and Brooks-Gun, p. 7O) Another study that very much confirmed the findings of Attie andBrooks-Gunn examined 116 adolescent girls drawn from a normal population ofstudents enrolled in private schools in a major metropolitan area. These girlswere followed over an 8-year period from young adolescence to youngadulthood. Over a quarter of the sample scored above the level identifying aserious eating problem at each of the 3 times of assessment (14, 16, and 22years of age.
) (Graber, Brooks-Gunn, Paikoff, and Warren). Like Attie’s andBrooks-Gunn’s study, this project also found that eating disorders were triggeredduring the pubertal stage of girls. This is why the researchers recommended,among all else, that primary prevention be indicated for all girls in earlyadolescence. (Graber, Brooks-Gun, Paikoff, and Warren, pp.
831-832). Together with pubertal causes, there has also been evidence suggestingthat dating is an ingredient to this phenomenon. Psychologists ElizabethCauffman and Laurence Steinberg examined 89 12-13 year old girls andexamined their dating and other heterosexual activities in relation to their dietingbehaviours and attitudes. The two researchers found that girls who were moreinvolved in mixed-sex social activities and dating boys were more likely to exhibitdisordered eating tendencies. (Cauffman and Steinberg. ) The authors made theintriguing finding that sexual activity is correlated with more symptoms ofdisordered eating.
This is especially interesting in as much as adults with eatingdisorders tend to be less sexually active. It thus appears that physicalinvolvement in early adolescence leads to increased concern about appearanceand attractiveness, but that when this concern becomes so great that it leads todisordered eating, the end result is often a decrease of the activities thatcontributed to the disorder in the first place. (Cauffman and Steinberg, p. 634)Eating disorders, therefore, have some common denominators but alsoremain complex.
The causes range from everything from sexual abuse to thesocial forces that construct certain female ideals that most women can simplynot live up to. Then, of course, there is a blending of causes. Overall, of course,while we must emphasize personal problems, it is necessary to keep an eye onsocial messages. Feminist-writer Naomi Wolf has discussed how cultural idealsfor beauty emphasize a slender body shape typical of prepubertal developmentthat is unattainable for most adolescents and women after puberty. Thus,adolescent girls may engage in excessive dieting in an attempt to meet theseunattainable cultural ideals even though they are not over-weight.
In a chapterentitled “Hunger” in The Beauty Myth, Wolf writes:. . . female fat is the subject of public passion, and women feel guilt about femalefat, because we implicitly recognize that under the myth, women’s bodies are notour own but society’s, and that thinness is not a private aesthetic, but hunger asocial concession exacted by the community. A cultural fixation of femalethinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession aboutfemale obedience.
(Wolf, p. 187)In light of all of these factors, it is possible to make some generalizationsregarding a significant portion of eating disorders. We know that they can be,and are, compounded by the social messages that Wolf describes. But thecauses obviously also run deeper into the personal realm. It appears thatproblem eating develops during early to middle adolescence, and that theseearly patterns influence later eating behaviour. Body image becomes crucial inthis development, as does the social and familial setting.
We have learned thisfrom the “developmental” perspective, which crystallizes the significance ofchanges in girls during their adolescent years. The potential remedy, therefore,exists in the understanding of these changes and how they affect self-image. Women with eating disorders are often in severe denial. The control oftheir body weight serves an important purpose in their lives, for onedysfunctional reason or another.
It is a way they can cope with their problems. Many women, as we have learned, use food to repress their emotions. They areout of touch with their feelings and use food as a form of escapism. They needpsychotherapy.
In order to help women suffering from eating disorders, it would first beimportant to follow the advice given by David Burns in Feeling Good. The NewMood Therapy. (Burns) Burns teaches certain steps in psychotherapy practisethat teach people to make charts of tables charted “cognitive distortion” and”rational response”. This entails a person writing down what is bothering themand then honestly answering the questions. (Burns, pp. 62-69) This might seemtoo simple, but it is incredible what healing can reside in a person honestlyfacing their personal secret pain and working through it.
The key here, of course,is that many young women who having eating disorders would simply not do thisbecause of their denial. The crucial aspect, therefore, is to make them reconcilethemselves with their pain. Though this is the most difficult process, it simply hasto be done. Burns shows throughout the book that the only way out of the pain isthrough the pain. After that, different treatments can be applied, but the first stepis for a person to be honest with themselves. For instance, a young girl with an eating disorder who wants to get bettermust write down whatever is haunting her: “I ate a hot dog today.
” After this,under the heading “Cognitive distortion” she should answer why this wouldbother her. Let us suppose she writes: “Well, because now I will get fat. ” Thenshe must ask why this would bother her. It is here that we begin getting to thedark recesses of the psyche and where many people who are in denial would notbe able to continue. But this girl must continue if she wants to get better. Suppose she writes: “Well, because then I would be worthless and no one wouldlike me.
” Then she must ask again why this would bother her. She answers:”Then I would be alone and would have no reason to live. ” But ultimately, theremight be even darker things at the bottom of the list, perhaps something like: “I’llprove I can stay fat, then men wouldn’t like me and then they would not sexuallyviolate me anymore. ” The point here is that the dark reasons for distortedthoughts would have to be faced. The person must recognize the root of theirdysfunctional behaviour, no matter how painful it is. After this exercise, as Burns teaches, the person would make a parallelchart of “rational response” in which they would answer every distorted thought.
To “I ate a hot dog today” the person would write, alongside it: “That is ok, it isgood and healthy to eat. ” To “now I will get fat”, she would write: “Well, notnecessarily because I am already underweight and even if I was, I only ate onehot dog. ” The next step would be the hardest ground to start working one, sincethe problem of this person is rooted in distorted thinking. To “Well, because thenI would be worthless and no one would like me” she would have to startconsidering the issues of whether her weight was connected to her self-worth. She would have to start understanding that self-worth was based on somethingintrinsic, not on something external.
In this step and process lurks the greatesthealing process, for so many of these illnesses are based on illogical thoughtpatterns. To “Then I would be alone and would have no reason to live” she couldstart seeing the ridiculous nature of this underlying belief. She could write downall the friends she has that would not care less how much she weighed. Shecould write down how she would never be alone anyway and that being alonemight not be the end of the world. This is just an example of course, and it is not to suggest that this writingprocess of “cognitive distortion” and “positive response” is the solution to allthese serious problems.
But what is important in dealing with eating disorders,and this is the point, is that the person who is suffering must be made to startthinking properly before anything else is done. Medication is not going to help ayoung girl who is convinced that looking like a skeleton is the only way to getmen to like her, and that her life would not be worth living if men did not find hersexually attractive. Obviously these ideas and beliefs would have to be dealtwith before any other approach is taken. The point here is that many young girlssuffering from eating disorders are fighting something and it is connected to adistortion in the process of thinking.
David Burns argues, with much success,that this thinking pattern must change before anything else. He also shows thetremendous success that it can provide in healing all kind of psychologicaldisorders. (Burns, pp. 383-405)To be sure, eating disorders are very serious illnesses; they do not haveeasily detectable causes and they do not have easily related cures. But we doknow several things that can be done.
Along with making a young girl aware ofher thinking, and making her be honest with herself and about her past, it is alsoimportant to clarify to her the social pressures that are sending her falsemessages. Education, therefore, is a must in the context of teaching that thesocial ideal of thinness perpetuated in Western society is distorted and flawed. Itis not connected to human nature and it is not connected to reality. Once youngwomen become aware that there is nothing wrong with their own personal bodyimage, a significant amount can be done on this issue.
More than anything else, we need to find compassion and understandingfor the victims of eating disorders. While we work on helping these individuals,we must also fight the social forces that objectify and exploit female body imageto the disadvantage of not only women, but of all humanity. No one profits if onehalf of the human race is being held under attack by socially constructed bodyimages that are rooted in morbid intent and infantile fantasy. BibliographyAttie, Ilana and Brooks-Gunn, J. “Development of Eating Problems in AdolescentGirls: A Longitudinal Study,” Developmental Psychology, 1989, vol.
25, no. 1,7O-79. Burns, David. Feeling Good. The New Mood Therapy (New York: Avon Books,1980)Cauffman, Elizabeth, and Steinberg, Laurence.
“Interactive Effects ofMenarcheal Status and Dating on Dieting and Disordered Eating AmongAdolescent Girls,” Developmental Psychology, 1996, vol. 32, no. 4, 631-635. Graber, Julia, Brooks-Gunn, J. , Paikoff, Roberta, and Warren, Michelle.
“Prediction of Eating Problems: An 8-Year Study of Adolescent Girls,”Developmental Psychology, 1994, vol. 3O, No. 6, 823-834. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth (Toronto: Random House, 1991) Words/ Pages : 2,818 / 24
