Challenges Faced by Support Persons of Individuals with Eating Disorders

KEY CHALLENGES FACED
BY SUPPORT PERSONS
OF AN INDIVIDUAL
LIVING WITH AN EATING
DISORDER

What are Eating Disorders?
 A mental health conditions where individuals’ habits associated with
eating undergo distortions from normal behaviours due to constant
preoccupation with misperceptions, negative emotions and thoughts
regarding one’s image and physical appearance.
 Eating disorders can be classified into a number of types, such as:
anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorders
 Lack of treatment can result in a number of psychological co-
morbidities such as: social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety
disorder, depression, substance abuse disorders and obsessive
compulsive disorder (Keski-Rahkonen and Mustelin 2016).

Challenges faced by Individuals with
Eating Disorder
 Individuals with an eating disorders are
constantly under the perception that a
failure to fulfil such unrealistic body
standards will result in them being
perceived as unacceptable and unfit for
social engagement.
 Restrictive food behaviours and starvation
are often coping strategies to combat the
constant stress and anxiety accompanied
with the constant emotional distortions
and self-critical pressures individuals with
eating disorders have to encounter for not
fulfilling the socially acceptable standards
of physical appearance and body image.
 Often the act of restriction one’s
consumption of food or completely
starving oneself administer a sense of
positive self-esteem and control within the
person (Golden, Schneider and Wood
2016).

Challenges faced by Individuals with
Eating Disorders
 Overeating or bingeing on large quantities of food are constantly used
as a common coping strategy by individuals with bulimia nervosa or
binge eating disorder to counter feeling and negative emotions of
loneliness, anger and sadness due to constantly starving oneself from
one’s favourite foods.
 This is then followed by purging as coping strategies to encounter the
negative emotions of self-hatred, self-loathing and a sense of failure
for consuming ‘forbidden’ foods in limitless amounts.
 If left untreated, such behaviours result in obsessive and compulsive
food restrictive behaviours occupying a major portion of individual’s
lives and a result, patients lose out on the eagerness to engage in
alternative activities which were once a source of enjoyment
(Robinson, Dolhanty and Greenberg 2015).