The Rise of Eating Disorders
Written By: Erin Stenson
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates of mental illnesses due to their physical and mental effects. Despite this, there’s still a lot of mystery around eating disorders and how they’re caused.
What exactly is an eating disorder? They are defined as “any of a range of psychological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits.” This range is wide, and the habits come in many forms.
One example of an eating disorder is Anorexia, a disorder commonly categorized by someone who is unhappy with their weight, fears gaining weight, and restricts their calorie intake in order to lose weight.
Another is Bulimia, a disorder where someone fears gaining weight but tends to eat large amounts of food at one time before attempting to remove the calories they consumed by vomiting, abusing laxatives, or excessively exercising.
Binge eating is similar to bulimia in that the person often uncontrollably eats large amounts of food, but they don’t attempt to remove any of the calories afterward, often leading to obesity.
Pica is a disorder where someone craves and eats non-food items such as dirt, cloth, or laundry detergent. Other common disorders are rumination disorder (when someone regurgitates undigested food after eating it and either spits it out or eats it again), avoidant or restrictive food intake disorder (mostly found in children, where they will undereat due to a lack of interest or distaste in food), orthorexia (a subset of anorexia where someone displays obsessive behavior in pursuing a healthy diet, including cutting intake of major food groups and excessive dieting), and EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified, which includes having symptoms similar to an eating disorder but not meeting any/enough of the described categories).
A lot of these eating disorders are relatively new in recognition, meaning that in recent years, the number of people with eating disorders has raised partially due to the fact that some people now know they have a disorder, instead of just assuming their eating habits were normal. Eating disorders actually stem from many factors, however. The first root from an eating disorder usually comes from genes and unconscious behaviors. For example:
A Twin Studies study found that in a group of people, a range of 41–54% of them was found to have evidence of different eating disorder susceptibilities on different chromosomes (Bradley University). This direct data shows that genes can easily influence someone developing an eating disorder, as having a higher susceptibility on one of their chromosomes means they’re more likely to develop one. Similarly, studies have shown that “biological relatives of individuals with Anorexia and Bulimia are 7 to 12 times more likely to have an eating disorder than the general population” (Bradley).
When someone has an eating disorder and they have a child, the biological history of the parent (having the disorder) affects the structure of their child’s chromosomes, increasing the child’s risk of developing it. On a direct sense, children take after the caretakers in their lives. Parents who struggle with eating disorders and body issues can unconsciously show an example to their child of an eating issue at a young age, causing the child to try and mirror that behavior or unconsciously hold onto that information, later influencing them to possibly develop an eating disorder as well (Susie Orbach).
“Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates of mental illnesses…”
-National Institute of Mental Health
A major influence on the development of eating disorders is other mental health disorders. It’s been shown that people who suffer from anorexia or bulimia can have high levels of perfectionism, impulsiveness, and negative emotion. These are symptoms that are commonly tied to anxiety and depression. Even someone who simply has a family member who suffers from an eating disorder is 2 to 4 times more likely to develop a type of depression than the general population (Bradley). Along with depression, there’s also a huge connection between eating disorders and substance abuse. Every day people use coping mechanisms to deal with what’s troubling them. For someone who needs to cope with an eating disorder, they can be quick to use substance abuse to do so (American Addiction Centers). Research finds that someone with an eating disorder is five times more likely to fall into substance abuse, and those who have substance abuse issues are eleven times more likely to have an eating disorder when compared to the general population (AAC).
Eating disorders are also pressured through media. There are ads everywhere. For beauty and fashion ads, advertisers only use models that look a certain way to fit into society’s perception of perfection. Scrolling through any social media you either see ads like this or people who change the way they look to fit into this standard. Since people want to meet the accepted standard, it encourages them to buy the company’s product. This is done to the extent that “evidence suggests that the mainstream appearance ideal for women tends to be associated with thinness, large breasts, and a small waist. For men, it was seen as more complicated with a greater range of ideals. For example, while there is an ideal of enhanced muscularity and low body fat, there is also a thin ideal. It was reported that there is also a narrow focus on promoting youth and Caucasian features for both women and men in media and advertising imagery (YMCA).”
As mentioned, many want to reach a physical ideal based on what the media shows. When people don’t fit that ideal, they can often have low self-confidence and worth and fall into mental health issues like depression. Often leading, as earlier explained, to eating disorders.
Dove research showed that “16% of women identified the media as a source of pressure to conform to appearance ideals and 86% of women said the media portrayal of women could be better.” Dove also found that 60% of adults in their study said that they feel ashamed of how they look.
While the media pushes beauty, it also pushes commercial business, such as fast food. When people are constantly shown advertisements for fast food restaurants they are encouraged to go eat at them. This can lead to obesity and eating disorders like binge-eating.
Overall, eating disorders are caused by a collection of things. Some of these things are genes, parental behavior, mental illness, and media.
Sources Used:
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomasinsel/blog/2012/spotlight-on-eating-disorders.shtml
https://anad.org/education-and-awareness/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/
https://www.bradley.edu/sites/bodyproject/disorders/
https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/information/anorexia/modeling-and-anorexia-where-have-we-been-where-are-we-now
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201112/history-eating-disorders
https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/the-connection-between-eating-disorders-mental-illness/
