Eating Disorders are very common among high school students. Young women are particularly at risk for developing eating disorders—90-95% of those affected are female. Our society is overly concerned with thinness, making it difficult for a young woman to be comfortable with her body.
Overeating related to tension, poor nutritional habits and food fads are relatively common eating problems for adolescents. In addition, two psychological eating disorders—bulimia and anorexia nervosa—are increasing among teenage girls, young women, and boys. Teenagers with either of these disorders are overly concerned with weight, food, body image and control in their lives.
Parents frequently ask how to identify symptoms of bulimia and anorexia nervosa. The fact is that many teenagers are able to hide these serious and sometimes fatal disorders for many months or even years.
Bulimia
Bulimics suffer from low self-esteem and distortion of body image. Teenagers with bulimia may be normal weight or even overweight, so they are often not noticed. Bulimia is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating, a feeling of lack of control over eating during binges, and use of vomiting, laxatives, diuretics or vigorous exercise in order to prevent weight gain.
· The person with bulimia binges on huge quantities of high-caloric food and then purges her body of dreaded calories by self-induced vomiting and use of laxatives. These binges may alternate with severe diets, resulting in dramatic weight fluctuations. Teenagers may try to hide the signs of throwing up by running water while spending long periods of time in the bathroom. The purging of bulimia presents a serious threat to the teenager’s physical health, resulting from dehydration, hormonal imbalance, depletion of important minerals, and damage to vital organs.
Anorexia Nervosa
Young women with anorexia become extremely thin, even though they still think they are fat. Refusal to eat, inability to maintain body weight, fear of gaining weight, and distortion of body image are part of the definition of anorexia.
A teenager with anorexia nervosa is typically a perfectionist and a high achiever in school. At the same time, she suffers from low self-esteem. She believes she is fat regardless of how thin she becomes. Desperately needing a feeling of mastery over her life, the teenager with anorexia nervosa experiences a sense of control only when she says “no” to the normal food demands of her body. In a relentless pursuit to be thin, the girl starves herself. This often reaches the point of serious damage to the body, and in a small number of cases may lead to death, if not diagnosed early.
Medical problems are common among teenagers with eating disorders. Anorexics can have electrolyte imbalances and heart, menstrual and gastrointestinal problems. Bulimics can have the same medical problems as anorexics. In addition, they can have problems associated with the binging and purging such as dental problems, swelling of the glands in the cheeks, throat problems and damage to the esophagus.
Activities that show signs of an eating disorder include:
· excessive concern with body image and weight,
· a need to go into the bathroom after eating,
· dramatic loss of weight, or
· obsessive need to exercise
If there is a suspicion of an eating disorder, family and friends are wise to have the person evaluated by a medical doctor and a psychologist familiar with eating disorders. Often a nutritionist will be consulted. Medications and psychotherapy are often the treatment. Many young adults will recover with appropriate treatment.
Resources begin on page 136, Web Sources on 165
