The Psychiatric Influences of Anorexia

The Psychiatric Influences of Anorexia

Anorexia Essay

Anorexia is generally described as an eating disorder and characterized as low body weight and body image disorder. It is a psychiatric diagnosis in which victims starve themselves, force themselves to vomit, and/or do excessive exercise. The psychological influences come from the four areas of interest: physical characteristics, cognitive abilities, emotional state, and social environment. All areas are greatly effected by many teenage girls throughout the video.
Physical characteristics drastically change in an anorexic being. These characteristics include body size, sex, appearance, drives, and inherited traits. All the victims in the video were all women, but it may also occur in males too. All of the women dropped large amounts of weight. One individual dropped from 120 lbs to 80 lbs when arrived at the rehab center, and there were numerous women who were in the 60 lbs range. When being weighed at the rehab center, they would stand backwards so they could not see their weight which made them feel more comfortable because they didn’t know if they were gaining weight or not. One victim was in such poor condition that her hair was thinning and her face was swelling from lack of protein. This is known to be one of the final stages of starvation, but yet the girl still felt as if she was gaining weight. One other victim drew a self portrait which was quite astonishing. She looked very malnourished and her rib cage was showing, but she also drew herself with very large thighs, claiming that she didn’t know if she was fat or thin.
The emotional state of anorexia seems to have mixed feelings, but it ultimately is consumed with anxiety and severe depression. One girl, who had beat her anorexia, was explaining how it was a high for her to get on the scale and see that she lost weight. In most cases of anorexia, the victims felt as if they didn’t deserve to live. They had very low self esteem and one girl would carry notes with her, to remind...

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