Word: nervosa
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...from her case, and lights a match. She stretches her long legs across the floor, resting her weight on the tiny pelvis outlined by her jeans. The smoke dances slowly around her soft, beautiful face as she begins to talk about why she is so thin, about her anorexia nervosa...
...textbook definition of anorexia nervosa is "a chronic illness principally affecting young girls after puberty. It is characterized by severe weight loss which is self-induced, amennorhea [loss of period], and a specific psychopathology." However, after a century of research on anorexia nervosa, this definition does not hold up well. The psychopathological basis for the disease is still not defined specifically enough to bring doctors who treat anorexia to a consenus on its cause. Furthermore, one in ten diagnosed anorexics is male...
...Salvador Minuchin, Director of ihe Philadelphia Child Guidance Center, has already attracted wide attention with his work on anorexia nervosa, the "starvation disease" (TIME, July 28). Now Minuchin and his team are concentrating on asthma and diabetes. In one case of diabetic sisters, ages twelve and 17, doctors found a metabolic defect, but only the younger sister responded to drugs and diet changes. A therapist found out why: each parent constantly tried to get her support in fights with the other parent. The allegiance of the twelve-year-old was not sought. Once the parents stopped trapping the older sister...
...many cases, family therapists argue, an outbreak of physical illness is both a symptom of high stress among family members and an attempt to cope with it. Minuchin says that anorexia nervosa victims are "saviors of the family" because they paper over parental conflicts that threaten to destroy the family. Psychiatrist Philip Guerin, director of the Center for Family Learning in New Rochelle, N.Y., finds that many fathers suffer heart attacks shortly after a grown son or daughter leaves home. His hypothesis: the child may have functioned as a buffer for parental conflict. Psychologist Dina Fleischer of Richmond...
Susan was a victim of anorexia nervosa, "the starvation disease" or "Twiggy syndrome," a rare and bizarre emotional disorder that has been occurring more frequently in the past few years. Of those affected, 80% are female, mostly in their early teens. Typically they are intelligent, ambitious, middle-and upper-class girls who are perfectionists and eager to please their mothers and fathers. Suddenly they start to diet and then simply stop eating, sometimes losing 50 lbs. or so in a few months. Some, like Susan, now 21, seek treatment and manage to get back to a normal weight. Others, with...