Eating disorder is a health problem that occurs when a person's eating habits fall outside normal limits. Eating disorders may increase concerns about weight or body image due to abnormalities in eating habits. This condition may have different types such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, obsessive weight control disorder. These disorders can affect a person's physical and psychological health and may have serious consequences. If someone shows symptoms of an eating disorder, they need support from a specialist psychologist.
What Is an Eating Disorder?
Contrary to popular belief, eating disorders do not emerge only in relation to food and weight; they often progress together with serious psychological problems. In this respect, we can say that eating disorders arise as an external search for solutions to an individual's inner turmoil.
All eating disorder conditions emerge in parallel with a deterioration in an individual's mental health. The deterioration in mental health, over time, leads to the emergence of eating disorder conditions that threaten the individual’s biological, psychological, and social integrity.
Pressures created by social and cultural influences, especially in individuals who have personal developmental difficulties, bring bodily preoccupations to the forefront as a field of struggle, along with the impact of unmanageable psychological negativity and hardships. In this direction, bodily perfection and physical attractiveness appear as areas to which excessive value is assigned. Body measurements, which have become a measure of value in today’s social and cultural structure, can reach dimensions that threaten individuals’ health. Exactly at this point, what is done to achieve an appearance considered “beautiful” according to value measures, or the health-related reflection of psychological dead-ends, appears to us as eating disorders. People who cannot express their emotions, inner confusion, and tensions, or who cannot express themselves through other means, express themselves outwardly through eating disorders, also under the influence of the social and cultural environment.
Although it appears more commonly in adolescents and women, eating disorders are problems that can occur in individuals of any age and any gender.
What Are the Causes of Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders progress together with psychological problems; however, no definite information can be put forward about their basic cause. Etiologically, it is accepted that biological and psychosocial causes occurring in the body play a role together.
Eating disorders can be defined as situations that are formed by psychological negativity or dead-ends together with various cultural and environmental factors, and that can reach dimensions that may harm an individual’s health. As the underlying causes of eating disorders, we can list the following;
- Low self-esteem in the person
- A sense of loss of control
- Problems expressing emotions and desires
- Identity confusion
- A feeling of powerlessness over the environment
- Communication problems within the family
- A family structure in which individuality is not accepted, sexual topics are not discussable, and which is perfectionistic and has rigid rules
- Depression
- Feelings of worthlessness
What Are the Types of Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders can be defined as psychiatric disorders that cause serious physical health problems in the person and carry a risk of death due to the high illness risk they create.
According to the criteria published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013, eating disorders are classified as follows;
- Anorexia Nervosa; is an eating disorder characterized by a deliberate effort to remain extremely thin. The person has an intense fear of gaining weight and loses excessive weight either by starving or by purging. Purging generally includes vomiting, using laxatives, and excessive exercising. As a result of being obsessively preoccupied with weight and body shape, a distorted body image may develop in the person.
- Bulimia Nervosa; is an eating disorder characterized by overeating and then secretly vomiting. It is difficult to diagnose this eating disorder, in which food intake cannot be controlled and the acts of continuous eating and vomiting are carried out.
- Binge Eating Disorder; consists of eating disorder patterns that usually occur secretly and are characterized by eating rapidly. This eating disorder manifests itself by eating an amount of food greater than what many people would eat under similar conditions, often in less than two hours, and continues until the person feels painfully and uncomfortably full.
- Unspecified Eating Disorders; are eating disorders for which the diagnostic criteria for any specific eating disorder cannot be met according to the diagnostic and classification system. Therefore, they are the least studied and most commonly diagnosed eating disorders.
The Consumption Relationship of Eating Disorders and Individual Therapy Practice
Eating disorders are consuming conditions that occur in people who have difficulty or blockage in expressing themselves and therefore producing. The obsessions, negative thoughts, and behaviors that develop in the person are fundamentally built on consumption. Therefore, eating disorders first consume the person through the negative thoughts and behaviors they create, and then consume the person’s family members, loved ones, and the bonds they form with life. For this reason, people who show eating disorder symptoms generally feel depressed, lonely, and tired.
The person with an eating disorder needs to express themselves. If the person does not express themselves, does not talk, or does not show their feelings, eating disorders can develop and reach more advanced levels. In this respect, in eating disorders, individual therapies, family therapies, and group therapies can be applied.
What Are the Effects of Individual Therapy on Eating Disorders?
In the psychological treatment of eating disorders, various methods are applied with the aim of resolving the psychological problems in the person.
In eating disorders, the cognitive approach aims to correct the body image in thoughts and perceptions, while the behavioral approach aims to ensure that the person gains weight in a short period of time. With the cognitive-behavioral approach, work is done on the client’s methods of coping with negative emotions. When the person cannot cope with negative mood and emotional states, they tend to turn to their physical appearance and the act of eating, with an inclination to consume themselves and all relationships they have established. With the cognitive-behavioral therapy method, first the body image in the person’s mind is corrected, and it is aimed that they adopt a healthy and productive lifestyle in order to cope with negative emotions and stress.
With the psychodynamic approach in eating disorders, it is aimed to reduce the person’s need to punish themselves and to confront self-harming behaviors.
