The Causes Of Eating Disorders

The definition of an eating disorder according to the Meriam-Webster dictionary is, “any of several psychological disorders (as anorexia nervosa or bulimia) characterized by serious disturbances of eating behavior” (Eating disorder, n.d.). Eating disorders have become progressively ubiquitous in today’s society, seeing that they are correlated with high mortality rates and pernicious health behaviors (Verma and Avgoulas, 2015). As society begins to revolve more around the desire to have the perfect body, the rate of eating disorders continues to increase. Eating disorders can also be further described by their types and how they are categorized, their symptoms and signs, who is affected, how they are affected by influential factors, and how they are treated.
According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there are three main types of eating …show more content…
The second limits the caloric intake to severe levels and correspondingly is constituted by binging and purging. The body, to compensate for the lack of calories, will lead the victim to intake massive amounts of food. The body does this because it believes it will not get another meal and must “stock up” to survive. However, the afflicted, after binging, can become extremely upset thinking they will gain weight. This intense fear of weight gain will lead to the action of purging. Purging is dispelling the consumed food from the stomach, in other words, throwing up. This vicious cycle of extreme malnourishment, binging, and purging can lead to significant health problems such as organ damage, heart disease, low blood pressure, and death. Moreover, anorexics are not the only people who can suffer from binging, in fact, it is its own disorder (“About an Eating Disorder: Symptoms, Signs, Causes & Articles for Treatment Help”