Hannah Applegate
Rough Draft Paper
Honors English
Laneri, Sue
“I need to be thin”
Is anorexia really worth it? Starving yourself to be that size that society wants you to be and not for yourself. Anorexia is a well known eating disorder that is caused by the refusal of an individual to consume food. It can happen for many reasons and major ones of them are stress and depression. In this case, anorexia is a consequence and should be treated from both aspects – mental and physical. In this essay I would like to consider anorexia, caused by the mental problem when individual considers him or herself overweight and is afraid to eat, as he thinks that it will only worsen his state. Anorexia is usually treated with a special diet.
Anorexia has significant effect on the behavior and mental attitudes of people suffering from it. According to the statistics of the international health association, anorexia is developed in the majority of cases among people between fourteen and eighteen years old. Scientists explain this fact by several implications. First of all, teenagers do not have control over their lives and try generally to go through numerous changes in emotional and physical sense. These changes are very often caused by their internal interpretation of external reality and reaction of people around them on their appearance and behavior. With these elements constantly influencing their decisions and life perception, teenagers and other age groups start controlling their body as a means of controlling their life and when this theory does not give any effect, they, rather than stop and think of possible alternatives, try to even further deepen this control. As a result, body takes control over mind and people fall into depression or stress that causes anorexia in a way medicine knows and interprets it today.
Most Americans can identify with weight problems and obesity. Women all over the country "feel fat," and people of every age, race and gender frequent health clubs and diet groups trying to lose weight. Open any magazine and there are advertisements proclaiming the newest diet techniques, most efficient exercises, and most effective diet pills. Dieting has become normality for Americans; someone not concerned with his or her weight is regarded as an oddity. Weight loss is a continual effort, and there are many "remedies" a person might be tempted to try. Fad diets flood the weight loss industry. It is easy to fall for these diets, which are not necessarily promoted in the best interests of consumers. What many people do not realize is that many diets are not nutritionally sound, and quite often they do not work.
Several pertinent factors favor enacting a law that would force an individual with a severe eating disorder to receive help. No matter what their age, whether eighteen, twenty-four, or thirty-six, people can still reach the point where they are so sick that the disease has taken over their ability to think logically. Anorexia Nervosa is a psychiatric illness that is most often seen in teenage girls and young women. The pervasiveness of anorexic females ages 15-19 was about 0.5% as of 1998. In women ages twenty to twenty-four, the figure was about 0.25%, but the disorder is still a medical concern in this age group. The disease has been found to last more than 4 years on average, but a few stay permanently sick. However, the death rate is high for mental sicknesses. Treatment of eating disorders is challenging, especially when the victims are not willing to admit that they have a problem.
Because anorexics realize they will be forced to gain weight upon starting treatment, they strongly refuse to receive treatment. As the disease gets progressively worse, so does the fear of treatment. People suffering from anorexia have this intense fear of, and trouble trusting in, relationships, because they know they will lose any control that they feel they have, and because most of the time they are strongly