Eating Disorders

The "Disease of Abundance."

When Karen Carpenter, a member of the popular singing duo The Carpenters, read a review that called her "chubby," she began an eight-year obsession with her weight. By 1983, when she died from heart failure from emetine poisoning brought on by taking ipecac to induce vomiting, anorexia and bulimia had become household words. American society was obsessed with dieting, and these puzzling and frustrating disorders were extreme examples of the national obsession with weight and appearance.

Anorexia Nervosa.

Anorexia was a form of extreme self-starvation and distortion of body image. Patients refused food until they reached a point of severe emaciation or even death. Even though looking in a mirror should tell them that they were too thin, they persisted in seeing themselves as too fat and were proud of their control over food. The term anorexia which means "lack of appetite," was...

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