Essays on Effectiveness of Interventions

Personal factors – the psychological risk factors include obsessive-perfectionist personality type, especially for a restrictive type of anorexia nervosa. Low self-esteem, sense of inferiority, insecurity, and inadequacy are risk factors for anorexia nervosa. This way, it should be noted that in this case the help of the psychologist will be extremely important and urgent measures have to be taken.

Cultural factors – These include: living in an industrialized country and the emphasis on harmony (thinness) as the main feature of feminine beauty. Stressful events such as death of a close relative or friend, sexual or physical abuse may also be risk factors for eating disorders.

Age factor – in terms of domestic pathopsychological school, psychologists say age is one of the most important conditions for determining the predisposition to anorexia nervosa. Risk group is adolescence and early adulthood. In recent decades there has been a speaker lowering the age of manifestation of the disease, as described in Anorexia nervosa and associated disorders.

Anthropological factors – In terms of doctor of medicine, Rotenberg, anorexia nervosa is associated with the search activity of a man: the main motive for denial of food is an active struggle with the obstacles and the challenge offered by the girls of their own appetite and all who want to get them to eat normally. In this struggle is manifested search activity, and the process here, as usual, is more important than the result. Helplessness – is a rejection of the search, the surrender, and surrender to the challenge that all important areas for them to throw their lives, making them particularly relevant to the sphere in which they did not surrender and remain active. Anorexia – is a process of overcoming everyday struggle, a kind of search behavior, and that these precious patients. This continued a desperate battle, which helps to restore self-esteem, reduced earlier surrender. Fear to return to normal food intake – this is not the fear of losing control, fear of loss is a call that makes life more interesting. Each piece of uneaten food is a victory, and it is more valuable than the more intense the fight won.

For definite diagnosis it requires all of the following symptoms:

a) body weight is maintained at least 15% lower than expected (higher level has been reduced or has not been reached), or Quetelet’s body mass index of 17.5 or below (this index is determined by the ratio of body weight in kilograms by the square height in meters). In the prepubertal age may show failure to gain weight during the growth period;

b) weight loss caused by the patient by avoiding food that is “full”, and one or more of the following methods: induction of host vomiting, laxatives, excessive physical exercises, use of resources, suppressing appetite and / or diuretics;

c) distortion of the image of his body takes the form of specific psychopathology, in which the fear of obesity remains as obsessive and / or overvalued ideas, and the patient finds himself only valid for low birth weight;

g) The total endocrine disorder involving hypothalamic-pituitary axis, manifested by the sex glands and amenorrhea in women and men loss of libido and potency may be elevated levels of growth hormone and cortisol levels, changes in peripheral thyroid hormone metabolism and abnormalities in insulin secretion;

d) at the beginning of a prepubertal manifestation of puberty are delayed or even not observed (growth ceases, the girls do not develop breast cancer and is a primary amenorrhoea, and the boys are juvenile sex organs), with recovery during adolescence is often completed normally, but later comes the first period.

Other symptoms of anorexia nervosa include: denial of patient problems; constant feeling of fullness own patients, violations of the ways food (eating while standing, breaking food into small pieces), sleep disorders, panic to get better, depression, and unjustified anger, resentment, as stated in Anorexia nervosa info.

Passion for topics related to eating: suddenly developed an interest in cooking, collecting recipes, cookbook review, the obsession with cooking and preparing meals for the luxury of relatives and friends without the participation of the patient’s food intake; interest in different diets, sudden desire to become a vegetarian.

Changes in social and family life: the reluctance to attend meetings and general meals, stop communicating with friends, frequent and long visits to the bathroom or excessive exercise outside the home.

Changes in behavior: irritability and melancholy, replacing euphoria, reduced activity.

Social fears are confirmed by inability to share with others attitude to eating, which causes problems in the immediate vicinity.

Among the physical disorders caused by anorexia nervosa: menstrual problems, cardiac arrhythmia, constant weakness, muscle spasms, and algomenorrhea. Self-assessment of a patient with anorexia depends on the shape and weight, and weight is measured not objectively. Losing weight is regarded as an achievement, set – as low self-control. Such attitudes persist even in the last stage (“My height 170, weight 35 pounds, I want to weigh 25”). Screening for anorexia nervosa is used to test the relationship of eating. One of the harmful effects of anorexia is a self-appointed and excessive hormonal drugs. Such cases are usually not amenable even to compulsory treatment.