Psychological Treatment for Eating Disorders

Eating disorders have had a substantial affect on today's society. In a recent study of female high school and college students, it was found that 15.4% of these women met the clinical criteria for an eating disorder (Lemberg and Cohn 7). Anorexia and bulimia are the two main eating disorders that these students suffered from. Anorexia is defined as being the cycle of self-starvation and the fear of gaining weight as well as low self-esteem. Bulimia is defined as the cycle of over-eating, vomiting, dieting, and exercising in an attempt to rid the body of food (Hoffmann 3). There are many treatments for these disorders. It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be a fool-proof cure for eating disorders; however, psychological treatment is necessary in the healing process.

There are many causes for eating disorders. Mental causes make up a good number of these. There are two main mental causes that both eating disorders stem from. The first cause is the pressure from society. These pressures may be specifically about weight or about other things. A pressure specifically about eating is that many women feel they must diet because of conversations about weight, size, and shape (Hoffmann 2). Another pressure that deals with weight, size, and shape specifically is television, magazines, and ads for diets, fitness, and cosmetic surgery. A woman only needs to turn on, open up, or catch a glimpse of these things to immediately feel pressured to be thin (Lemberg and Cohn 27). The other pressures society causes are pressures about public appearances and social events. Many women use food to calm their anxiety about certain social events. Other women even eat more at home before they attend social events to hide their overeating. This process only backfires because they end up eating more food than they would normally. The women who use the food to calm themselves cause themselves greater anxiety on how they look after they eat the food (Poppink 7). The second mental cause of eating disorders is that many women feel the need to be in control. They gain the control they need from their food. "The control they exercise over their body prevents them from feeling out of control or lost." Many of them use this control to forget other feelings of loneliness, insecurity, and depression (Hoffmann 2).