Personal Speech

Eating Most people do not give this a second thought. It comes as naturally to most people as breathing. For others, however, eating is the source of a severe psychological disorder. This disorder is known as anorexia. According to Harvard’s eating disorder center, one out of every one hundred young women between ten and twenty are starving themselves, 8 million people in the United States suffer from eating disorders , and without treatment the death rate is around 20-30% due to complications from the illness. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that can cause a person to literally “waste away,” in some cases starving to death. They may try to stop eating entirely, exercise excessively, or purge their food by vomiting or misusing laxatives. This disorder is not only limited to teenage girls as many think, some men as well as older women also develop the problem. This is a very dangerous disorder. Today I will talk about the causes and consequences of anorexia. The causes of anorexia are psychological and the consequences are physical and psychological. First let’s look at some of the main causes.
There are many psychological causes that lead to anorexia. When looking for root causes of such a damaging disorder like anorexia, one of the first things examined is the anorexic’s childhood – their family life and childhood. Paul Robbins, author of a book called Anorexia and Bulimia, found that anorexics are often raised by parents with certain characteristics. Mothers of anorexics have been described as anxious, overprotective, and fearful of separating from their children; fathers are described as moody, withdrawn and passive. It has been found that the parents usually have psychological problems. Furthermore, anorexics often come from families that have a difficult time communicating.
Although the families of anorexics do have an impact, the real problem lies within the patients themselves. Harvard’s eating disorder center found that there are psychological