Causes of Anorexia Nervosa in Young Girls - Dissertation Example

Anorexia Nervosa was identified as early as 1873 when William Gull coined the term (Giordano, 2005). In 1874, Lasegue termed it as “anorexie histerique’ and later ‘anorexie mentale’ (Bruch H., 1980). Mara Selvini Palazzoli called it ‘anoressia mentale’, i.e mental anorexia so that it avoided confusion with neurological and endocrine disorders. Yet, ‘anorexia nervosa’ continues in usage internationally. Etymologically, the meaning of anorexia is ‘lack of appetite’ though anorexia nervosa does not mean lack of appetite. On the other hand, it is a condition of trying to suppress the feeling of appetite despite being hungry. (Giordano, 2005). Moreover, starved of food, anorexics tend to always think of food (Bruch H., 1980). This is the reason why Selvini Palazzoli states that mental anorexia is not a case of lack of appetite but a desire to be thin for achieving which anorexics willingly indulge in self-denial of food (Palazzoli M. S., 1998). In Germany, the condition is known as ‘adolescent mania of thinness’ (pubertatsmagersucht) (Gordon, 1990).
Anorexia affects 0.5 to 1 % of the population as reported by the American Psychiatric Association in 1999. The data available on the prevalence is inconsistent because of methodological problems involving several years of screening (Giordano, 2005) Prevalence denotes the number of cases in the population and incidence is the number of new cases in the population involving eating disorders (Hoek H. W.). In addition, there are cases never reported in the case of silent sufferers who would not seek help and never admit that they have the problem resulting in their data never entering statistical estimates (Giordano, 2005). In addition to anorexia nervosa, there are other eating disorders such as bulimia and binge eating all of which are exclusive to the Western and Westernized, and other developed countries (Wardle, Bindra, Fairclough, & Westecombe, 1993). Eating disorders such as anorexia have been recognized only in the recent past as a syndrome. They appear in the 1992 version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) though anorexia nervosa appears in ICD-9 itself. It was a rare syndrome in the 1970s (Hill, 1977).