Eating Disorders In The Movie Eating Disorder

In the documentary Thin I noticed that each eating disorder, in terms of the diagnostic criteria, were extremely similar. All the patients in the film suffering from the eating disorders held all or most signs of the diagnostic criteria. All of the women refused to maintain a body weight that was normal for their age or height, and when they ate or gained a little weight they grew anxious and fearful of becoming fat, even though they were clearly underweight. Many of the patients were also in denial of the seriousness of there unhealthy and deadly body weight. All their self esteem or self evaluation was based solely on thinness, and the women were completely convinced that they were fat showing their struggle with body dysmorphia. When one

These women suffering from these disorders truly see themselves as fat, even when it is obvious that these women are far from being overweight. I also noticed a huge overlap between Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. A lot of the patients met the criteria for both, Sometimes switching from restricting food to binge eating and purging. I guess the fact that these women are able to so fluidly change and morph into different behaviors/methods is what makes these eating disorders so hard to treat. Some patients show traits from both eating disorders showing how complex it is to help the patients get better. This film shocked me. Going into watching this film I knew the basics of eating disorders, but I could not even

I think that towards the end of the movie I was hoping for these woman to get better. Throughout the whole movie we see the patients struggle with their eating disorders, and its just heartbreaking. We find out in the end that after the women have left Renfrew they just fall back into the usual eating disorder routine. They work so hard just to go back to stage one, and I think that this aspect of the movie was what made it so sad. We take away from the movie that these eating disorders are not easy to treat, and these problems never leave the patients. The patients have to live with depression, like Polly who ended up committing suicide after leaving Renfrew. Some woman have to live with physical reminders of there eating disorders, for example one of the patients said that she was a woman trapped in the body of a little girl that was not even able to have a period. Alisa lost a baby due to her eating disorder, which leads me to my second take away from this movie. These eating disorders do not only effect the individual living with them, but also the people living around them, like their family and friends. Usually people tend to forget that patients have families and friends who have to live with the pain of seeing their cousin, mother, sister, daughter, son go through these eating disorders. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie is seeing Shelley’s twin cry and scream at her sister for not trying to get better.