Size Zero Models Fuel The Rise In Eating Disorders, UK

Main Category: Eating Disorders
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 17 Apr 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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With constant images of stick-thin, size-zero models, tiny-waisted pop princesses and actresses is putting young girls' health at risk and fuelling the rise in eating disorders, according to Professor Janet Treasure of the Eating Disorders Research Unit at Kings College London.

Unrelenting exposure to pictures of thin women reduced self-esteem, especially among teenage girls. Professor Treasure says that evidence from 25 research studies shows that this effect was strongest in adolescents - and in people who valued thinness.

Professor Treasure has called for more focus on reducing obsessive dieting, bad eating habits and body dissatisfaction among the young. Being underweight has serious repercussions, Treasure adds, disrupting growth and brain development and leading to fertility problems and brittle bone disease, while eating disorders are often fatal and can lead to other addictions such as drugs and alcohol.

Dr Peter Rowan, a consultant who specialises in eating disorders at Cygnet Health Care, Britain's leading independent providers of psychiatric care, agrees that the growing obsession with being ultra-thin - fuelled by catwalk stars such as Lily Cole and Kate Moss - is having a "dangerous influence on the public" leading to reduced self esteem, especially among girls, however he says that it is more a continuation of a process that has been going on for sometime.

He says: "It is certainly true that the repeated images of these sort of models and the airbrushing of everyone to impossibly idealised body shapes makes women extremely self critical."

Cygnet Health Care has a number of programmes in place to help people - mainly girls - with eating disorders.

Dr Rowan says: "We treat people with anorexia nervosa, with bulimia nervosa and with similar girls who don't quite fit within the exact limits of the diagnoses. The programmes are designed to help the patients achieve a normal body weight with a normal eating pattern so that they can begin to explore and deal with underlying emotional issues. This is achieved by taking over control of the eating and at the same time using a range of therapies to explore and manage feelings. They are treated as outpatients or day patients or when necessary as inpatients.

"We explore with the girls how food and weight really relate to feelings and emotions. We show them that eating in more healthy ways tends to allow a more normal appetite drive so that this paradoxically gives them better control of food and weight. We try to help them to learn how to manage and control themselves emotionally without using food in ways that become self damaging."

Dr Rowan says early diagnosis, treatment and management of eating disorders is of paramount importance.

He says: "When girls with eating disorders recover they are most likely to be normally fertile but the fact remains that there is an association between bulimia and polycystic ovaries that is not yet fully understood.

"Most girls with eating disorders do not have very serious versions of the illnesses. Many, however, are at greater risk of developing brittle bone disease when they are older. There is certainly an increased risk of developing another addiction. But the greatest risk from eating disorders is from not being able to lead a normal life, establish and maintain normal relationships and often they become deeply unhappy. Eating disorders very often damage the way of life; girls drop out of school or university for example. They are not so frequently associated with being fatal, but when they are it is usually because of the psychological effects of being undernourished and suicide is the result."

Cygnet Health Care