Troubled Teens and Eating Disorders

Anorexia Nervosa

Major symptoms of the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa include:

Other conditions associated with Anorexia Nervosa are:

• The feeling of being cold and chilled most of the time. Anorexic teens often wear oversized layers of baggy clothes to hide their bodies and to keep warm.
• Pale and dry skin. Chronic weight loss will also cause skin rashes.
• Insomnia, moodiness, irritability. The child exercises and then feels listless and depressed and has difficulty concentrating. (It may be difficult for parents to distinguish this moodiness from the common moodiness of adolescents.) The child is interested in doing little else other than figuring out calories and food charts.

While a younger, pre-adolescent child may not yet show the physical signs of Anorexia, a parent or teacher should be alert to these warning behaviors:

• Strange eating rituals, such as cutting food into tiny pieces, arranging and rearranging foods on the plate before eating, and eating less and less at any meal.
• Obsessive exercising and/or working out.
• Skipping meals and/or avoiding eating with family and friends.
• Talking more and more about hating their body, focusing on being thin, and concentrating their attention on diets, calories, and fat grams.

While Anorexia most frequently affects girls between the ages of 12 and 19 (Costin, 1999), more cases involving males are surfacing. During these years, huge emotional and physical changes are taking place, and both girls and boys are vulnerable to the seduction of control by starvation.

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