Diagnosis Of Anorexia Essay

Diagnosing and Treating Anorexia Anorexia is a dangerous mental illness that is becoming very common around the world. Anorexia is an eating disorder where the suffering cannot keep a healthy body weight and has a very poor self-image. People with cannot keep a healthy body weight and often throw up and starve themselves to maintain this image. It is considered a mental illness because no matter what the individual does they are not thin enough even when they are near death. Many psychologists are trying to figure out the main cause of the disease but there is no main diagnosis or treatment for the illness. It occurs mostly in women but men suffer also. There are many ways to diagnose and treat individuals suffering from Anorexia. Diagnosing an individual with anorexia can be very tricky but once diagnosed a treatment can begin. Many psychologists have found different …show more content…
Men and women often arrive severely thin, malnourished, sick, and have many other very questioning symptoms. The patients will try to find excuses and blame other factors for why they look the way they do, but a health professional knows the diagnosis and has well proven it. A Complicated Process: Diagnosing and Treating Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia states that “The psychological criteria for AN are also a problem. Through the Internet, patients with AN have learned not only diagnostic criteria but how to fool doctors both in diagnosis and in treatment. For example, they will deny the fear of gaining weight even though their behavior-such as eating very small amounts of food, fasting for long periods of time and excessive exercise-indicates they have such a fear” (Halmi, 2005, pg.59). When patients do this, they are prolonging their illness and are not on a road to recovery. Since it is a becoming a widespread problem diagnosing the illness will only become more and more difficult over