A scourge of modern times occurring in adolescence, anorexia nervosa is a mental disorder whose most advanced manifestations lead to real health dangers. We distinguish between anorexia nervosa and anorexia:during the first, the patient fights against hunger, while the second occurs when he has completely lost his appetite (cf. anorexia , loss of appetite in Greek).
During adolescence, the question of identity, of the metamorphosis of the body (especially in girls:95% of cases of anorexia are female) are immutable issues. There are increasingly early cases of anorexia, while it does not appear beyond the age of 25. In absolute terms, a person can live all his life in a state of moderate anorexia (BMI less than 17.5) but the disease will necessarily have started during adolescence. On the other hand, the earlier it is detected, the greater the chance of recovery. This is why the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health calls on parents to be vigilant, because anorexia is generally noticed late.
The causes and psychic mechanisms of anorexia have not yet been precisely identified and are, in any case, the sum of several factors. Anorexia is psychological before being physical:going to the end of the fight against your own hunger is a question of will. The anorexic state leads to a form of euphoria due to the nutritional deprivation that the subject imposes on himself, and the feeling of personal success tends to improve. In fact, the anorexic seems to model a new identity, passing through the physical, which comes to sublimate a reinforced self-esteem:indeed, she feels stronger because she is able to refuse hunger, a vital function, and not not give in.
Several data come into play, but among the triggers of anorexia we can cite external factors that lead the young girl to put herself "on a diet":fear of "forcing" like some of her friends at the time of the puberty, wanting to prove to yourself that you can fit into today's aesthetic standards... A seemingly innocuous diet, which can quickly slip into an obsession with the scales. The patient develops an apologetic vision of thinness and rejects her feminine morphology, deemed unattractive or even cumbersome:too many hips, etc. She aims for goals such as the thigh gap and always reviews her tolerated weight threshold.
It is very rare that a click or an awareness occurs on its own; very rarely, a major psychological shock may cause the subject to return to food, but the aggravation of the disease is more often observed. When anorexia becomes critical (ideally before, but as said above it is difficult to detect it at its beginnings) hospitalization becomes essential as well as an adapted food program:the digestive system must get used to receiving food again, through multi-daily mini-snacks. Healing is hard psychologically because it first involves accepting your "true" body, the one you didn't choose.
