Eating Disorders Among Adolescents

Nowadays a lot people have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. From all the age groups, adolescents have suffered the most. There can be many causes for an eating disorder, it can be because of heredity, peers or the media.

In Piaget’s theory of “cognitive development in adolescence” explains how they can call an eating disorder anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Anorexia is self-starvation and it can come from different factors as like heredity, low self-esteem, mood/anxiety disorder but the people surrounding them and the media can also have a big influence on them. People with bulimia they use laxatives and self-induced vomiting. Eating disorders not only happen with girls but with guys, boys make up 10% of documented eating disorder cases. In a world we live in now skinny is beautiful and being thick is not as beautiful and it’s seen as different, teenagers are easy to influence because they’re not as mature, when they see the perfect models or body builders online they get fascinated and want to be like them, causing them to have a low self-esteem and seeing what are the easiest and faster ways to be like those influences also family members that pressure them to lose weight can lead to this disorder. If a person its overly concerned about their body and have a history of dieting these are key factors of knowing someone is going through anorexia/bulimia.

In the article “Body Image: Before The Obsession” talk about the research they have done for eating disorders in adolescents. They’ve explained how 90% of people that develop anorexia or bulimia, are adolescents in their teenage years and early 20s. Psychiatrist Walter H. went into detailed about how 42% have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at a young age way before they started with an eating disorder, Dr. Kaye confirmed by doing a social experiment with 672 individuals but also found out it can come from a genetic pathway. This article had a lot of good information that Piaget covered in the theory of cognitive development in adolescence and covered nature vs. nature.

Moreover; having an eating disorder can be really difficult, a person who suffers from anorexia/Bulimia can go into depression, get into a deeper hole and be hard to get out. The article “Eating Disorders in Children and Adolescents: State of the Art Review” talk about what causes an eating disorder in a person and how it should be taken care of. Based on this information it is mentioned that most of the adolescents that have an eating disorder go untreated, and not recover or they get treated to a little and leave, this illness can take a while for it to go away because not only is an eating disorder, but a patient can now have other disorders too that can cause them to fall into an eating disorder again and it is also mentioned that most of these patients have had “previous histories of obesity”. It is also talked about that families don’t have the fault if one of their members go through this and it is wrong; sometimes family members can be one of the main reasons why a person goes through an eating disorder, if a family member reminds them of their weight and makes them feel bad it can cause someone to be self-conscious of themselves. Furthermore; for patients to get better they should intern themselves into an outpatient family based treatment.

In conclusion, part of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in adolescence has been proven to be right, eating disorders are common in adolescents and can come from any type of anxiety, media, and family. There are many ways to know someone is going through an eating disorder if they care too much about their body weight and history of dieting. To help out a person they should be treated by a professional