Overview of Eating disorder
People have faced a number of deadly diseases in modern world. Eating disorder is a common disorder characterised by obsessive thoughts about food and body weight, shape. This mental illness leads to serious health problems and brings about a significant increase in mortality. Therefore, this essay will present a sociocultural factor for eating disorder, its impact on patients' families as well as cognitive behaviour therapy to deal with it
The development of eating disorder involves a complex set of interaction between biological factors, psychological factors and sociocultural factors, but the sociocultural one is focused on this essay. Treasure, Schmidt and Furth (2005) claimed that eating disorder might be less common in developing and non-Western culture countries. This is because Western culture strongly considers thinness as success and beauty (Yager & Powers 2007). It is possible that culture influences people's eating behaviour in some particular ways. Furthermore, according to Hoek et al.
(cited in Treasure, Schmidt & Furth 2005) reported that incidence of bulimia nervosa in urbanised regions is three to five time higher than that in remote areas. Eating disorders develop as a result of the perception of body shape and decreased social control in urbanised areas (Treasure, Schmidt & Furth 2005). In particular, Richardson (cited in Gilbert 2005) stated that fat children are considered dirty, stupid, sloppy and less likeable than others. Furthermore, sexual abuse is able to make a considerable contribution to abnormal eating behaviour. According to Gilbert (2005), female suffered from eating disorder more frequently if they have been abused since they made an attempt at preventing themselves from thinking about their tragedy.
Regardless of the causes, this illness imposes heavy burden not only on the sufferers, but also on their entire families and society. However, its pressure on the family is...