Why are eating disorders becoming more common in females aged between 8-15?

Question

This is for an assessment. I live in Australia so i would prefer my answers to relate to Australian females. Statistics would be great. I would need referenced information. I need to compare statistics from 1998 and 2008. Thank you.

Answer 1

goto the butterfly foundation.

they have everything for eating disorders, they are the primary foundation for eating disorders.

Answer 2

I think because there are more thin looking women on television,and in the movies. Also,there are a lot more fashion magazines out trying to show how women 'should' look. My opinion.

Answer 3

Because girls in those years are very impressionable

Answer 4

Because the media has poisoned the minds of women and girls around the world. Such things as Barbie and my scene dolls with their barely there clothes and their stick thin bodies, this is all kids know. They know no different from the women they see on tv and in model magazines, and the Barbie dolls they play with. The image of being anorexic is a body shape that is praised in our generation. Women who starve themselves are considered to be full of willpower, and have "amazing bodies", such as Miranda Kerr and Kate Moss, you can see their ribs! For all these kids know, that is what they are supposed to look like.

  It's a sick and cruel world, which is becoming more and more vain each passing day.

Thats a good argument to put forth.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Personally, I think that youn females aged between 8-15 are more common to have an eating disorder because these girls are teens or are almost teens because there is a lot of pressue to look like their favorite celebs like Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson ect, these celebs are skinny, georgus and are very much adimed by the girls. Girls are also discovering the teenage life what consists of partys, boys, girls, fitting in most importantly, to do this girls feel as thought they have to be skinny example: to get the invite to the party you have to be in a "cool group" to be recoginsed also that all the skinny & beatuiful girls have boyfriends and to have a boyfriend you have to be skinny and beauitful.

Also there seems to be a lot more bullying happening in schools at the moment, so if you slightly overweight you will be teased by the "cool group" and then your friends won't really want to hang out with this fat chick so eventually your fat, have no friends, are lonly, become depressed, don't have a boyfriend & arn't invited to the partys. For a teen, this is h**l! And they are being judged on what they look like so they then develop and eating disorder and start loseing weight, soon enough they have the teenage life back! But seriously, if it were my friend we all come in shapes and sizes if your a good friend you won't care what they look like!!

Answer 6

don't get people to give their referenced information for you. it's your assignment. you need to find the information yourself. but im doing my honours year in psychology at uni and i know a bit about health psychology - eating disorders.

if you want stats on eating disorders go to www.abs.gov.au that is the australian beauru of statistics on prevalence and other epidemiology.

but really, eating disorders is really not that significant. people just seem to think that eating disorders are so prevalant because there is so much attention being paid to the problem that it seems more prevalent than what it really is. and the actual number of people that die from ED is really low. so dont get caught up in it that its a massive problem.

but to write up your assessment, make sure you use proper reference sources. use info found from proper organisation websites, not from like pro-ana websites n that because info on those types of websites aren't based on proper research, its just lay person's opinions -- thats if you are in school. if you are at uni obviously you'd use journal articles.

i forgot to mention some other stuff that no one else has mentioned. yeah people can be influenced by the media etc and become more concerned about their weight in that way. but you gotta realise that eating disorders are also about control. when you have an eating disorder it makes you feel like you have control and are in control of your life. can generally be other psychological problems fueling this need for control. but in terms of 8-15 yr olds, thats for you to find out for yourself by researching the internet.

Answer 7

If you need references you are better off searching in certain databases. You can do so through your university or college. Look for psychology databases. For stats you can look at the census info. Again...just do some searching...perhaps google the latest australian census info. Also you can use google scholar to look up some articles which are available to the public about this topic. I don't think anyone on here is exactly going to go and look all these up for you. So I hope I have given you some handy tips to get started. Good luck!