Illustrated Explanation - Choice

This is a really interesting video. It is mainly about politics, but as it I was watching it i made quite a few comparisons and parallels with eating disorders, and then within the last few minutes they addressed them directly. 


I know much of the video is irrelevant, i found even those bits interesting regardless. I definitely think it is worth watching. I also enjoy the other illustrated videos the channel has done.. They are interesting to look at and explain topics well.


Sophie x  

Negative Self Evaluation Explaination

Fairburn et al. did a study in 1999 which found that a high risk factor for bulimia was negative self evaluation. Another study by Button identified low self esteem to be a risk factor for eating disorders. Perfectionism is also a trait with a high risk factor, which would increase and intensify a negative self evaluation. 

Buttons study involved 594 school girls aged 11 to 12, who were evaluated for self esteem.  400 of these girls were followed up when they were 15 to 16 by answering a questionnaire about eating and psychological problems. Those with low self esteem when they were 11 or 12 were more likely to have low self esteem later, they were also more at risk of eating disorders and other problems related to health family and school.

This all seems fairly obvious, but there you are.

Sophie x 

Pressure To Succeed Explaination

Anorexia is perhaps most common in families where the parents professional an middle class. It is also more common in those who go on to higher education. This could suggest a link between the illness and a will and the pressure to succeed and improve. Also, from the pressure to succeed from family, can come depression an other psychological problems (including anorexia) if the pressure is too much. 

This does make sense to me. I think i am in middle class, i am in higher education (college, and intend on going to university) and my mum has always put a hell of alot of pressure on me. The pressure i got was to do well in exams. I know another anorexic whos mother pressured them alot into being 'cool' and social. There does appear to be a link between the two in my eyes. 

It has ling been something my family and me have thought that i have had some depression which manifested itself as an eating disorder and if it hadnt been that, it would be something else like drug abuse. This would support that pressure leads to psychological problems including depression and anorexia.

Sophie x

Expectations

I going to hit you with some more psychology. I had an exam in it last week so im pretty clued up on it at the moment!

The reason i got thinking about this, is that for dinner tonight, i wasnt asked what i wanted, it just began to be prepared. I said to my mum that i didnt really want a baked potato and that it was unfair that i wasnt asked. Now, if a 'normal' person, or me before my disorder had said this, my mum would have probably just said oh sorry or something. But instead my dad shouts down the stairs somthing like 'stop rejecting and complaining about food, your weak, its your anorexia, stop being so weak and think about what your saying' blah blah blah.

Why this has to do with psychology is that one of the core studies i had to know was called Insane in Insane Places, by Rosenhan. Part of the study involved sane people being admitted into a mental hospital and trying to convince the staff that they were infact sane. The pseudo patients kept notes, a normal behaviour, except the doctors wrote in the records 'patient engages in writing behaviour' and if they arrived early for lunch, they had ' oral acquisitive syndrome'. Their normal behaviours were being seen in the light of what their diagnosis made people expect them to act like.

I think the same is happening to me. I cant ever just not really feel like something, infact i cant ever not like any food. Its always my anorexia that doesnt like the food apparently. I always thought people had food that just wernt to their tastes but seems like im not allowed that.

:(

Sophie x

Individual Identity Explaination

It has been suggested that eating disorders can be related to family issues and relationships. This involves adolescent's 'struggle' to gain an individual identity and independence. In some families, the parents will enforce so much control that the children to not gain a sense of individuality, resulting in low-self esteem. Part of the family control may be that the parent cooks the meals and the child eats them. Therefore, a way to resist the control and find individuality and independence, may be not to eat.

This theory seems quite stretched. I think it seems like too smaller thing to have such a large impact (although i suppose it is often the small things). Perhaps vomiting is a more extreme form. If a meal is cooked by a parent and the child throws it back up, that could be seen as resisting control. 

I know that i was always made to sit at the table and eat my meal. I was an extremely fussy eater as a child but my dad would not let me leave the table without eating everything. So i guess in this way, control was enforced on me. But still, i dont think i would use this to rebel. It seems too cruel and an insignificant thing to rebel with. I dont know, i dont think this applies to me, but it is a plausible theory.

Sophie x

Psychodynamic Explainations

If you didnt know, Freud created the psychodynamic approach and it is very controversial. Freud was the fist person to suggest we have an unconscious mind which influences our behaviour and also that we have drives within us, constantly in conflict, determining how we behave. It is controversial because of how strange and weird some of his theories are, for instance, that children go through psycho-sexual stages of development. 


Repressed sexual impulses. Freud said that eating is a substitute for sexual expression and therefore, anorexia could be seen as a way to repress sexual urges. Psychologist Hilde Bruch suggested that anorexia is connected with psycho-sexual immaturity. 


A suggestion is that woman have fantasies about impregnation and confuse fatness with pregnancy. They unconsciously believe that eating will lead to pregnancy and so starve themselves. I would just like to point out that this makes very little sense to me! I thought unconsciously we all wanted to carry on our genes and continue the race, therefore we would want to be pregnant on an unconscious level. 


Another suggestion is that eating becomes linked to taking on an adult role, including an adult sexual role and so the women who cannot face this, will starve themselves to avoid it. So they can maintain childhood or regress to it. Bruch claims it has a mutual reward for both mothers and daughters. The mother may be over anxious about her daughter growing up, limiting her independence and keeping her child-like. For the daughter, her behaviour has enabled her to continue to be dependent on her mother. I have heard theories similar to these before, i didnt know that they were originated from the psychodynamic perspective for a long time though. I think it does make sense that a person may want to remain a child and not want to grow up, and it does seem like anorexia is a way to prevent this physically as it prevents puberty. However, i dont think this applies to me as i have always been desperate to grow up to fast! I also think that a mother could possibly want her daughter to remain 'her baby' and not grow up. However, my mother certainly want me to get out of this and i dont think she wants me to stay this way!


Sexual abuse and gender socialization. Psychotherapy studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with early experiences of sexual abuse. A large proportion of those studied had experienced this. However, i know i and many others have not been abused in this way, so this is not a necessary criteria.


Well i certainly have my doubts about these explanations, but maybe i am biased because i am inclined to reject Freud's theories just because i dont want to believe that humans are so weird.


Sophie x  

Cognitive Explainations

The cognitive approach looks at thought processes to explain behaviour. The key point in the Cognitive Approach to this issue, is that it is caused by a persons irrational beliefs that they cannot be valued unless they have an ideal body and physical appearance. And as people with eating disorders often have a distorted body image (usually that they are fat), they continue to loose weight in order to get to that perfect body image.


Thoughts which have been noted by psychologists Bemis-Vitousek and Orimoto (1993) were consistent with with the model of Abnormality, for example "I am not yet thin so i must lose more weight". Irrational thoughts were also noted "I must continue to lose weight so i can continue to be in control of my body" this is an irrational attitude about control, as except there is no control as they are losing a dangerous amount of weight.


Fairburn et al. in 1999 conducted an interview study which compared 169 eating disorder sufferers, 102 people with other psychiatric disorders and 204 healthy controls. The results showed that many eating disorder sufferers were perfectionist and had a negative self evaluation. 


The cognitive approach suggests that irrational thoughts is what causes these disorders, but it doesnt tell us where these irrational thoughts come from.


I certainly think this is a plausible explanation. I know for sure that these irrational thoughts have been on my mind. It is a shame that it cannot tell us where these thoughts originate and why we have them.


Sophie x

Behavioural Explanations

The next psychological approach: The Behavioural Approach.


Media promotes the message that 'thin is beautiful'. From advertising in teenage magazines to TV. Therefore, people frequently turn to diets. Many, as i did, originally decide on just going on a diet, but it went too far.


Classical And Operant Conditioning
Classical conditioning suggests that slimming becomes a habit, through stimulus response mechanisms. So a person goes on a diet, and when they get slimmer, receives complements and admiration from others and creates an association between getting slimmer and feeling good about themselves. Operant conditioning comes when a person's dieting behaviour is further reinforced by these complements and the admiration. Refusing to eat may also be reinforced by attention received from parents and friends. Or starving can be an effective way to punish parents. [these last 2 ideas are not very nice, i dont like them and hope they arnt true]


Cross cultural studies seem to support the behavioural explanations. Eating disorders are more common in industrialised societies (Europe, USA, Canada etc.), in these places there is an abundance of food, yet being attractive is associated with being thin. A 1994 study showed that immigrants to these countries developed eating disorders more than those in their original country.


I think this is plausible, cross cultural studies do back the theory up. However, i didnt really receive any positive reinforcement (all my friends told me to stop because i was already slim apparently, this was probably true but i interpreted it ad them not wanting me to get skinny and attractive.. im such a douche!) and i wouldnt like to think it was for the attention or to punish.


Sophie x

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Genetic Explaination

I wanted to look more into the causes of anorexia in this post. There are so many psychological explanations that i am going to split them up between posts. I am a psychology student (A-level) and so i have access to alot of information on this subject. However, i am on the only course which doesnt cover eating disorders, which is annoying because i would probably ace that section! Ok so onto the genetic explanation!

Even though science has yet to be able to identify genes for specific behaviours, eating disorders can still be researched from this perspective by looking at families and whether a disorder runs in the family.

Reports in 1994 said that there was an increased risk of eating disorders if first degree biological relatives (parents, children, siblings) had been diagnosed with an eating disorder.  However, this may not be due to genetics as families often share the same environment and living conditions and experiences. Behaviour may also have been learned by other family members.

There have been studies on twins which provide much more reliable evidence. The research compares identical (where the twins are genetically the same) and non identical twins (where the twins are only as genetically similar as regular siblings). Environmental factors can therefore be largely ruled out if a significantly higher concordance (both twins having the same disorder) were to be found in identical twins than non identical. 2 psychologists; Holland et al. (1984) and Kendler et al. (1991) both claim to have found evidence of genetic bias in both anorexia and bulimia. 

I may go into these studies in detail in a later post, but right now im just going to write the conclusions and explanations. There was a higher concordance between identical twins than non identical in both the studies. In Holland's study about anorexia, there was a 55% concordance, however, this means that 45% were discordant (one had a disorder, the other didnt).


Some such as Hsu (1990) have suggested that the genetic element may not be to do with an eating disorder gene, but personality traits. Traits like perfectionism and emotional instability which make a person more susceptible to stress, which could then turn into an eating disorder (or another mental disorder). Apparently, in many cases of eating disorders, the family have a history of mood or personality disorders.


I think the idea of personality traits is true. I know that there are many of these which people with eating disorders share so this makes sense.  However, as far as i know there have been no eating disorders in my family and no depression or any mental illnesses (although it is quite possible there have and i just dont know, its not really one of those things you talk about i suppose). I think genetics definitely could be a factor.


In later posts i am going to go through the other theories by the different approaches and perspectives of psychology. Hopefully, by the time i have gone through them all, i (and you!) will have a better and broader understanding of these disorders.

Sophie x 

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