Eating disorders, which are serious mental illnesses, affect everyone from teenage children to adults across the globe. These are the conditions that can have an utterly terrible impact on a person’s overall health. In other words, people with eating disorders, have both poor physical and mental health, which affects their life in several ways.
According to Charter Harley Street, it’s not a new thing to use food for dealing with stress and pressure; however, once this habit develops into an eating disorder, it becomes remarkably difficult to recover from it.
Common eating disorders, which affect a large number of people in the UK include anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. People with these mental disorders generally believe that they are overweight, and hence, they use all kinds of weird tactics to reduce it. However, the fact remains that some of the people struggling with these conditions are underweight. It means even if they are thin, they view themselves as overweight, and due to that, they adopt abnormal eating behaviour.
Although eating disorder like anorexia nervosa affects everyone; however, if you talk specifically about teenagers, it can ruin their future if they fail to get the right kind of treatment at the right time. Anorexia nervosa is a kind of condition where a person believes that they are overweight and hence, they start avoiding foods which they think lead to weight gain.
In the worst case scenario, an eating disorder can even claim the life of the patient.
According to BBC, “Eating disorders are responsible for the highest number of deaths from the psychiatric illness. The Eating Disorders Association estimates that about 165,000 people in the UK have eating disorders with 10% dying as a result, but experts believe it could be higher. Most sufferers are women, but one in 10 are now men.”
If you talk particularly about anorexia, where the patients want to reduce their weight like anything, it is more common in school and college students.
On the other hand, a condition like bulimia, where a person loses their capacity to control their urge for binging, is more common among adults.
Here’s a detailed explanation of common eating disorders.
Anorexia Nervosa
One of the most common forms of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa affects teenagers extensively. It’s a mental condition that makes one think and believe that they do not look good because of their excessive weight. People with this problem hate their bodies and hence, they indulge in abnormal eating behaviour. They try to starve themselves thinking that it will help them in losing weight, but in reality, most of these people are underweight, and the worst part is that they do not realise it.
Symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa
- Low body weight due to the restriction of food
- Fear of gaining weight
- Escaping family and social events to avoid food
- Spending time alone
- Dry skin, thinning of bones, fatigue
- Low blood pressure and mood swings
- Exercising for hours
- Creating distance from family members and friends
Bulimia
Marked by the episodes of overeating, bulimia nervosa is a condition that affects adults more than teenagers. And after overeating, patients with this problem start compensating their behaviour by carrying out intense exercises at gym, fasting, and purging.
According to Anorexia Bulimia Care, “Recent studies suggest that as many as 8% of women have bulimia at some stage in their life. The condition can occur at any age, but mainly affects women aged between 16 and 40 (on average, it starts around the age of 18 or 19. Bulimia nervosa can affect children, but this is extremely rare. Reports estimate that up to 25% of Britons struggling with eating disorders may be male.”
Symptoms of Bulimia
- Consuming excessive amounts of food within a short time
- Compensating binge eating behaviour with excessive exercising and purging
- Choosing clothes to hide their body weight
- Hiding eating behaviour from others
Binge Eating Disorder
People with this mental disorder feel that they cannot control their eating habits; hence, they avoid eating food in front of others. It is similar to bulimia in many ways; for example, people often indulge in activities like purging and excessive exercise after consuming a large amount of food in a short time.
Symptoms of binge eating disorder
- Excessive Eating
- Stress, anxiety, and depression
- Avoiding dinner parties because of their eating pattern
Now let’s take a look at why eating disorders are so common among college students.
Students Want To Look Good
If you talk about the victims of anorexia nervosa, most of them have a strong desire to look good by maintaining a beautiful figure. It is a mental problem that’s especially very common among young girls. One of the most crucial reasons for this is they get to see a lot of beautiful girls around them in the college, and hence, they also want to become like them. And for achieving their goal, they begin to starve themselves.
Impact of Celebrities
Everyone looks up to celebrities because of the simple fact that they are popular. If you talk particularly about college students, they want to follow everything that their favourite stars do. Young people observe everything from how their favourite celebrities look and communicate to what they eat and how they deal with people around them.
They read every news about the star they love the most, and hence, they want to become like them in every sense. And since all the celebrities have a beautiful body, young people also want to enhance their fitness level for which they try to do all sorts of weird things like purging, spending hours in the gym, and fasting, etc.
Young People Tend To Experiment
Young people go to every possible extent to chase their dreams. They experiment a lot to succeed in what they want to achieve. So, when it comes to reducing weight, a lot of them who hate their bodies, end up creating their fitness routines and dieting plans without consulting an expert. In other words, because of their unwavering desire to lose weight, they indulge in behaviours that lead to an eating disorder.
Competitive Attitude
Some people have a very competitive attitude; they want to be the best in every area of life. They don’t only compete with their friends in scoring good marks but also want to have a more beautiful body than them.
Therefore, their competitive attitude, which forces them to maintain a more beautiful body than their friends, sometimes leads to problems like an eating disorder.
Besides, biological factors like genetics, nutritional deficiencies, and irregular hormone functions can also lead to eating disorders.
