Potential Causes of Eating Disorders

As with any kind of disorder, disease, or illness there can be many causes of eating disorders both simple and complex.

According the National Eating Disorders Association website :http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/information-resources/general-information.php#causes-eating-disorders ; there are many factors that can play in to all eating disorders in general, while they may all begin with preoccupations with eating and food there is other causes behind the disorders that have much more to do with than just food. These may include but are not limited to; psychological factors such as low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, or even depression and anxiety. Other factors may include personal problems such as relationship issues, difficulty expressing feelings or emotions, and even a history of sexual/physical abuse or bullying. Social factors can also play into the cause of eating disorders such as trouble finding a place to fit in, the pressure from society to be thin, and cultural norms which pressure an ideal body weight/image. And finally biological factors can play a role. Now this is still being researched by scientists but there is a theory that biological dispositions may automatically make someone vulnerable to other causes of eating disorders or to eating disorders in general based on your genetic makeup (NEDA, 2011).

Jeffrey G. Johnson and collegues conducted a study of 782 mothers and their offspring. They were interviewed during three stage of life; childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of the offspring. The following factors were assessed; childhood maltreatment, eating problems, environmental risk factors, temperament, maladaptive parental behavior, and parental psychopathology were assessed during childhood and adolescence. Their research was based on previous research which suggested that childhood adversities may contribute to the development of eating disorders. Previous research found that individuals with eating disorders are more likely than to report a history of childhood maltreatment, other chronic childhood adversities, and problematic relationships with their parents. This is just what Johnsn et al,. found in their study that children with reported childhood adversities were more likely to experience eating disorders in their adolescent years (Johnson, 2002)

Introduction to Eating Disorders

What is an eating disorder?
According to the National Institute of Mental Health's public health service titled "Eating Disorders: Facts About Eating Disorders and the Search for Solutions", humans control their eating habits in many ways. The article states, "Eating is controlled by many factors, including appetite, food availability, family, peer,and cultural practices,and attempts at voluntary control" (NIMH, 2001). From this we can conclude that it is a natural process to desire to be skinny and do certain things to make us skinny.
Eating disorders come in many forms some of which include, Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, and Binge Eating disorder.

What is Anorexia Nervosa?
According to Melissa Spearing the author of the booklet released by the NIMH in 2001 Anorexia nervosa is characterized by;

•Resistance to maintaining body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height
•Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight
•Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight
•Infrequent or absent menstrual periods (in females who have reached puberty)
(Spearing, M. (2001)

Basically an adolescent/teen who is characterized as Anorexic desires to be thinner and achieves exterme degrees of thin by repeatedly starving themselves of needed nutrients.

What is Bulimia?
A great definition of Bulimia is found from the website http://mirror-mirror.org/bulimia.htm.

The website offers an equisite definition of Bulimia and what a person who suffers from Bulimia often goes through. The website says, "Bulimia is an eating disorder in which the person eats large quantity of food in a short period of time (binges) and then rids him or herself of the food to avoid weight gain (purges). They may purge by vomiting or by using laxatives to make the food leave their system faster so less of it gets absorbed. People with bulimia may also abuse diet pills and/or exercise compulsively in order to avoid weight gain" (Mirror-Mirror, 2011).

What is Binge Eating Disorder?
According to Spearing in her article from 2001 Binge Eating disorder is characterized by Binge Eating episodes: which means that the person eats an excessive amount of food in a short period of time and marked distress relevant to the Binge Eating episode. It is important to note that Binge Eating disorder is not associated with any of the following behaviors; purging, fasting, or excessive exercise (Spearing, 2001).

This should give you a lay out of the three main eating disorders that may affect your child's life and health. Remember that Childhood Obesity is also a type of eating disorder that affects many children today. This will however not be covered in this workshop due to lack of personal experience.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! This blog was designed for our Parent and Child Relationships class final project. The project guidlines were that we were to design a parent workshop on a subject of our choice. The workshop we have designed through this blog is Eating Disorder Education: a workshop for parents seeking to identify and understand eating disorders in their adolescents and teens.

We hope the posts will provide you and your family with helpful information; our hope is that we will be able to:
1)Help parents to understand eating disorders including what some potential causes are.
2)Help parents to be able to identify eating disorders in their children based on some typical symptoms.
3)Teach parents to intervene.
4)Give parents some resources and contacts with whom they can gain support from.


Please scroll through the other posts in the blog. Feel free to comment and ask questions along the way. Enjoy!

(Note: All images included in our blog are taken from Google Image)