Word: anorexia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many of these years, Collins continued to feel like a little girl alone, the only person with her problem in a Ken Kesey world of psych wards. Now the problem of "cutters" like Collins has come out into the open; some are calling it the "anorexia of the '90s." An estimated 2 million Americans purposely cut or burn themselves, break bones or otherwise mutilate themselves. That figure may even be low, say many experts, judging from the growing number of reports from hospitals, schools and therapists. Karen Conterio and Wendy Lader started S.A.F.E. (Self-Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives, the nation...
...down the staircase and cut herself with razors, pen knives and lemon slicers. "You have so much pain inside yourself," she said in an interview with the BBC, "you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you need help." Says Steven Levenkron, a pioneer in the study of anorexia and author of two books on self-injury: "It feels like an epidemic, but it's an epidemic of disclosure. And I credit Diana with that." One sign that the malady is fully emerging into the daylight: it has been the "disease of the week" topic on recent episodes...
...numbers are staggering. Approximately 1 in 150 teenage girls in the U.S. falls prey to anorexia nervosa, broadly defined as the refusal to eat enough to maintain even a minimal body weight. Not so clear is how many more suffer from bulimia, in which they binge on food, eating perhaps two or three days' worth of meals in 30 minutes, then purge the excess by taking laxatives or inducing vomiting. Nor does age necessarily protect you. Anorexia has been diagnosed in girls as young as eight. Most deaths from the condition occur in women over...
...neurotransmitter in the brain, in women who had been free of bulimia for at least a year. That may help explain why drugs like Prozac and Zoloft, which affect serotonin, have allowed a lot of bulimics to stop bingeing. Unfortunately, the pills don't work as well for anorexia. Nor do they offer a simple one-stop cure. Health-care workers must re-educate their patients in how to eat and think about food...
...denial by listening to how someone you are concerned about talks about her body. Does she moan about her fat behind even though she's rail thin? Is she hiding under baggy clothes? Has her energy level dropped so low that she's sleeping all the time? Doctors suspect anorexia when a woman weighs 15% below normal and hasn't menstruated for at least three months. But there are more subtle signs as well: the growth of baby-fine hair (as the shrinking body tries to keep warm), brittle nails, swollen joints. Bulimics may develop a chronic sore throat...