The prevalence of eating disorders among adolescents is mostly described by a condition known as Anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is the third most common persistent illness among adolescents after asthma and obesity. It has a prevalence of as high as 2.2% among women aged between 20 and forty years old. Studies have shown that 60% of teenagers are on a diet program to avoid gaining weight or to maintain a certain weight. Teenagers go to the extent of smoking cigarette to control their weight. Eating disorders start between the ages of 10 to 20 and escalate at adolescents making adolescents the most prone to eating disorders (Golf, 2016). There is hence a need for knowledge on how to detect eating disorders in adolescents early to avoid the effects from becoming critical.
There are various ways of detecting eating disorders among adolescents early to avoid complex conditions. One primary way is to look out for the signs and symptoms of eating disorders such as rapid weight loss over a short period, preoccupation with food but not eating, regular weight checks, visiting the bathroom after meals, induced vomiting and excessive exercise among others. Parents, school nurses and teachers are at the forefront of identifying such signs in adolescents. Adolescents will often exhibit such signs when they start displaying eating disorders, and they are easy to detect if observed keenly. Adolescents who are obsessed with body weight and shapes and have eating disorders become socially withdrawn and may seem to concentrate on ways they can lose weight. Such signs may be hard to detect since eating disorders do not necessarily show in the form of excessive weight loss and adolescents especially girls will often hide signs such as vomiting, varying eating tendencies and habits they take on to remove food from their system (Altmann, n.d).
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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) format is used to detect eating disorders in adolescents and adults in general. The DSM-5 criteria have various guidelines of determining eating disorders and the type. The DSM-5 guidelines provide the minimum body weight for multiple ages and height. Refusing to maintain the weight corresponding to the height and weight identifies one as anorexic. Adolescents with an intense fear of gaining weight and becoming fat despite having their low weight fall in the anorexic category as per the manual. The DSM-5 criteria also identify people who portray disturbance by their body shape and weight to the extent that they use unfair means to influence the form their weight such as refusal to eat or excessive exercise or both or medication after eating have eating disorders. Teenagers with eating disorders go to the extreme of inducing vomiting after meals to get the food out of the system (American Psychiatric Association, & American Psychiatric Association, 2013). DSM-5 also includes that eating nonfood substances consistently for a month qualifies as an eating disorder. The manual also states that any abnormal eating habits that do not have social or cultural support amount to eating disorders.
Practitioners can ascertain that the adolescents are exhibiting symptoms of eating disorders signs by looking at the history of the adolescent as a child. According to research, children with eating problems often suffer from early adolescent eating disorders. Childhood eating challenges often intensify at adolescent hence provide an excellent way to detect eating disorders in early adolescent stages. Further studies showed that negative relation to mealtimes, eating struggles and conflicts during childhood were indicators of possible eating disorders in those children at adolescent. Children who pick on foods as babies exhibit food problems as adolescents. On the other hand, emotional struggles are also significant indicators of eating disorders. The risk of eating disorder in adolescents is therefore visible early enough in their lives. The diseases might already be pre-existing and only intensify at adolescent (Hafstad et al., 2013) Even when the conditions of eating disorders may be evident at adolescents there is need to go back to the history of the teenager to detect when the problem might have begun.
In conclusion, eating disorders are common among adolescents because they are cautious about their body size and shape. Teenagers are affected by the generation perspective that low body weight and petite bodies are the norms hence will go to extremes to achieve them. In the process, they develop eating habits that amount to eating disorders and cause health and psychological issues. It is, therefore, necessary for parent, guardians and health practitioners involved in teenagers’ lives to stay keen and detect eating disorders before they reach extremes and seek medical help early.
References
Altmann, E. (n.d). Adolescent girls at risk for eating disorders: How educators can help. The Lookstein Center Online Journal . Retrieved from http://www.lookstein.org/online_journal.php?id=178.
American Psychiatric Association, & American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders .Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Golf, H. (2016). A review of evidence-based treatment for eating disorders: Children, adolescents, and adults (eating disorders in the 21st century). Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 26 (1): 84–87.
Hafstad, G. S. et al. (2013). Early childhood precursors for eating problems in adolescence: A 15-year longitudinal community study. Journal of Eating Disorders, 1 (35).
