Anorexia Nervosa Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Anorexia Nervosa - Research Paper Example â€Å"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. â€Å"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). â€Å"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. â€Å"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