Eating Disorder Psychology

The purpose of this paper is to convey the psychology behind eating disorders like what causes individuals to obtain these disorders. Research shows that eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have been linked to low self-esteem, stress, conflicts, and depression. Eating disorders can be addressed with a behavioral perspective, psychodynamic perspective, and with a cognitive perspective.

Psychology of Eating Disorders “To eat or not to eat, that is the addiction” (Voelker 2007). Eating disorders are real and destructive each with the potential to destroy an individual relationally, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Eating disorders are classified with the term “nervosa,” indicating that these disorders originate as a nervous disorder. The term anorexia is the inability to eat, therefore, the term anorexia nervosa delineates to being the loss of appetite due to pathological fear or nervousness. Bulimia nervosa is a disorder in which one consumes large quantities of food in a short time but vomits excess food in order to avoid weight gain. “Eating disorders are an important cause of
Anorexia nervosa is the disorder in which individuals will fast in order to maintain or lose body weight. Individuals who fall into this category of eating disorders have unhealthy or inappropriate eating habits.“In some patients, the restriction over food intake is also motivated by other psychological processes, including asceticism, competitiveness, and a wish to punish themselves” (Fairburn 2003). Individuals will go to the extreme self-harming due to their intense fixation of a thinner body goal. “Anorexics always see themselves as overweight so they obsessively exercise to bum ingested calories” (Voelker 2007). Eating disorders can bring about many complications