Anorexia
What Is Anorexia And How The Mental Illness Can Be Controlled
Most people if asked would not know as to what is anorexia. Awareness and knowledge about anorexia is simply not there because it affects only about 1 percent of the population. This eating disorder begins at a fairly young age. It begins just before the onset of puberty. Its teen victims, especially girls, starve themselves because of an obsessive mental emphasis on being thin. The illness is marked by an extreme weight loss. Such loss is often to the extent of 15 percent below the normal body weight. Although such teen anorexics are quite skinny, they are not aware of their thinness. Rather they are convinced that they are still fat and need to slim down further. Anorexic patients have an obsession about their body image and all things related with food.
Some of them fervently exercise more than is good for their health. They do so in the hope of the seemingly never reachable objective of retaining thinness. They also strive hard to hide their starvation from their near and dear ones. They may go to the toilet in the middle of a meal to throw up food in an endeavour to retain thinness. They become extremely selective about their food habits and often even refuse perfectly non-fattening nutritious food. Notwithstanding all their efforts to retain their body image, which is already extremely thin, their minds refuse to accept the truth about their thinness. They still think that they are extremely fat. This is the strange aspect about anorexia. It is an illness that creates unbalanced thinking and therefore it is classified as a mental illness. The mental illness is so far entrenched in the anorexic patient's mind, so much so that good caring advice often has the opposite effect on them. Their parents may tell them that their obsession is all wrong and they are already quite thin. But they do not heed the advice and continue to starve their bodies of food and drink. The mental imbalance in teen anorexics often advances to extreme levels. The limit is when some of them reach out to other members of the anorexic fraternity through the formation of 'pro ana' support groups. The support groups harp on the correctness of their obsession about retaining thin bodies. They religiously propagate the idea of the correctness of thinness as the non-violable norm regardless of health consequences. It is important that parents of teen anorexics play a significant role in bringing a change in their mental outlook regarding their obsession on thinness. The parents need to provide gentle support to them and provide them specialized and sensitive care. They need to often educate their afflicted daughters about what is anorexia and how their daughters can rid their minds of the incorrect obsession. Click on one of the other article titles to learn more about anorexia. |
