ANOREXIAWHEN IS SKINNY TAKEN

TOO FAR?

Callum Jenkins, Caitie Anderson and Eden GilliganLa Trobe 2011

Contents Information- What is Anorexia?- Treatments- The Face of Anorexia- Why do they feel this way- Effects on relationships- Boys get anorexia too- Is anorexia the same all over the worldOur Opinion- how anorexia effects the family

What is it?Anorexia is an eating disorder which a person starves them self to become their idea of thin. It can affect anyone, but is most common in teenage girls. Anorexia can start with by different reasons like having emotional problems and starving themselves can give them relief from that. Sometimes they do it to get noticed or just to lose weight. Some anorexics get motivated by photos of skinny celebrities and models that is why people say that the media is one of the causes for anorexia.

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TreatmentAnorexia is one of the few eating disorders that can be developed. Some people have anorexia and bulimia at the same time. So they are starving themselves and throwing up the little that they do eat. There is not a medicine that an anorexic can take and just be cured. When the anorexia gets bad enough they have to be sent into hospital, and while in hospital they are monitored and watched twenty four seven. They are given food that they have to eat, and are not allowed to leave there bed for anything even to go to the toilet an hour after they have eaten, that is to stop anyone burning off the food by exercise or throwing it up. It they do not eat the food they are given, they get a tube down there nose and are force fed through that. There are places that specialise in curing eating disorders too; it’s pretty much the same rules as at a hospital but there are only people with eating disorders there. It can take up to years to become healthy again after having an eating disorder, and some people never do. Lots of people starve them self to the stage were they die. It is easier to cure when they it is caught right at the start, it is a lot harder when they have been doing it for longer. Sometimes doctors think that they have cured the anorexic but a few months later they have gone back to their old habits and are sent back into hospital and that can happen a number of times. Once anorexics are to the stage that they have to be sent to hospital they have brainwashed them to feel guilty when they do eat, they feel shame when they have put on weight. They find it really hard to cope with all the changes they are going through after all the pain they put themselves through staving themself. It takes a lot of hard work to recover, and one of the hardest things is getting the anorexic to admit that they have a problem and need help. Once they have done that they have to gradually start deleting the all thoughts they have about food from their mind, they have to stop feeling guilty about eating and realise that it is a good thing to eat. Then they are put onto a strict diet, with foods with really high carbohydrates to help them put on fat. But the absolute first thing they have to do, is stop them from all their thoughts they have about eating, putting on weight and their appearance. Once the anorexic wants to be cured and has stopped all their negative thinking it is a lot easier to help them.  

.Face of anorexiaIsabelle Caro ‘the face of anorexia’ in Italy. Has been anorexic since she was thirteen, she posed for naked photo shoot in which she could display the effects of anorexia has on your body. She wanted to raise awareness of the disease to people in the fashion industry. To give you an idea of the extreme of her disease her BMI (body, mass, index) was under 14. And she weighed 30 kilograms. Isabelle quoted ‘it’s a big step for me to eat a meal even a cup of tea is sometimes too much’. After the way she has treated her body and stomach it will take years for her to go back to having a close to normal diet.

What makes them feel this way?for people to do this to themselves they normally have something wrong or they just really don’t like what they look like and want to change. problems with their family such as brother or sister run away or parents split up can strongly cause kids to make them think there life is not important and needs to be perfect. Relationships such as a boyfriend/girlfriend aren’t working well. But most of the times its just simply because they are not happy with their body, they think the easiest way to make them happy is to lose weight, and if they don’t eat, theres not really much way to put weight on. They get so brainwashed with their own strange and unreal rules that they get really sick.

Effects on relationships there are so many effects it has on all different types of things such as families, friendships, relationships.With the family it can affect how close the parents are together, the kids and see anorexia is maybe the right thing to do if they want to look pretty as there brother or sister. friendships will be affected at this time because when people go into these moods they shut themselves off completely till they feel they look beautiful, if the friends don’t know what’s happening with them they will just stoping worrying and think that they just aren’t getting along well.

BoysI was reading that in some countries boys get anorexia too but not for the same reason as girls, research has shown that most girls start an eating disorder because they want to look like a role model and someone famous in magazines. For the boys it has been said that it goes through their mind that if they lose every bit of fat then it`ll help them play better at sport and there fitness. Every 1 in 10 people that get anorexia are boys and that has been scientifically proven.

Is anorexia the same all over the world? Anorexia is a mental illness and not a choice therefore it is prevalent all over the world, whether it’s in the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean or up in the Swedish Alps eating disorders are still found. Anorexia is in reality a strive to be what they think as ‘perfect’, to be in ‘control’ these are all factors that you can quiet easily find anywhere, once we put the stereotypical ideas of the Greeks, the Spanish the French aside we can see that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what your heritage or background is anorexia can truly hit anyone and sadly takes 5% of the world’s population each year. 8 million people in the United states suffer from this eating disorder on average, 40% of teenagers in the u.k develop this mental illness, between 30,00 and 40,00 people in Greece have extreme cases of some type of eating disorder and at least 5 people in this room would have beaten or may still be battling this mental disorder. Yes anorexia happens all over the world but no, it’s not the same every person has a different set of reasons, events or lifestyles that can lead to it. This disorder is relevant around the world even if we don’t see it spread across the news or papers it’s still affecting millions of people across the globe. Some statics show that there is a larger amount of people affected by this disorder in the western countries; france, Australia, united states, the u.k compared to the eastern nations; greece, serbia, italy, macedonia personally I don’t believe this is because of any cultural difference but simply the medias focus on what women should look like, they’re not told that the ‘perfect’ women is stick thin with their collar bones sticking out instead their “idols” or celebrities are fit with toned mussels and a bit of shape.

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