Essay On Anorexia Recovery

Anorexia nervosa disorder affects the entire family. Family counselling facilitates recovery in the individual by addressing problems in the family environment (Matthews 55). Treating anorexia involves three steps: getting back to a healthy weight, starting to eat more food, and changing how one thinks about oneself and food (Smith). The steps to anorexia recovery are one, admit one has a problem. The first step in anorexia recovery is admitting that one’s relentless pursuit of thinness is out of one’s control and acknowledging the physical and emotional damage that one has suffered because of it. Two, talk to someone. It can be hard to talk about what one is going through, especially if one has kept his or her anorexia a secret for a long time. One may be ashamed, ambivalent, or
The advice and support of trained eating disorder professionals can help one regain his or her health, learn to eat normally again, and develop healthier attitudes about food and one’s body (Smith). The Initial goal of treatment is to prevent death by starvation (Matthews 52). The first step in the treatment is correction of the starvation state (Matthews 53). The drug of choice for the treatment is food (Matthews 54). Treatment begins with comprehensive history and physical examination to rule out concomitant psychiatric or medical disorders, and to assess medical complications (Matthews 52). An inpatient program is most successful with a hospitalization of 10-12 weeks in order to achieve maximum physical and psychologic rehabilitation (Matthews 53). It may take years to recover while undergoing several hospitalizations and relapses (Matthews 55). The long term mortality from anorexia nervosa is over ten percent (Matthews 267). Morality rates for anorexia vary from five to twenty percent. Higher mortality rates have been found with longer duration of illness, extremely low weights, poor family support, purging behaviors and multiple relapses (Matthews