Eating Disorders: A Case Study

“Alicia is fifteen years old and weighs sixty pounds. She refuses to eat, because as she says, ‘Once I start I will just keep gaining weight and gaining weight and it won’t stop.’ She has suffered a heart attack, weakened kidneys, and is blind in one eye. She has been hospitalized about fifty times, during which she was force-fed until her weight returned to a minimum that would allow her to return home. Each time she relapsed and started starving herself again. Her parents are crushed. They are between continuing to let Alicia lie in a hospital with tubes in her arm and taking her home or watch her starve to death” (Goodnough 7). As one can tell from Alicia’s story, eating disorders are a serious mental and physical illnesses that have life-threatening …show more content…
People with anorexia see themselves as fat, and try to fix this themselves by self-starvation and excessive weight-loss. People suffering from anorexia are usually very skinny and underweight. “Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents” (ANAD). This means that anorexia can not be prevented by vaccines or medicine, and once diagnosed, no medicine will make the disease disappear. The person suffering has to overcome this mental disease on their own. The next eating disorder many people suffer from is commonly known as bulimia. “Bulimia centers around bingeing and purging of food. Bulimia includes eating excessive amounts of food in short periods of time, then getting rid of the food and calories through vomiting, laxative abuse, or over exercising” (Tracy). The third disorder is binge-eating. Those who suffer with binge-eating disorder lose control over their eating habits. They often have food binges of unhealthy and fattening foods. Unlike bulimia, people with binge-eating do not vomit or any use any other method to lose the food they ate, causing them to be overweight or obese