Journalism / Eating Disorders - An Unacknowledged Addiction
It is generally accepted that a person can become addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, prescription medication, and illegal drugs. But addictions come in many forms that the majority of people are not aware of. Something as seemingly harmless as eating can become an addiction if it starts to be abused. Eating disorders, long considered “dieting taken to the extreme,” are serious, life-threatening illnesses with many of the same mental and emotional causes that drive others to use drugs. Just as substance abusers often become addicted, so too can people with eating disorders find themselves addicted for the rest of their lives.
The most important thing to know about eating disorders is that they are seldom just about food. They may start because of a person’s desire to look a certain way, but there is usually an underlying emotional cause for the disease. The majority of teenagers who succumb to eating disorders have problems with depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. They suffer from low self-esteem and constantly feel a lack of control over their lives. These things amplify the fear of being fat until it grows into an obsession they cannot fight.
One of the number one causes of any addiction, whether to smoking, drinking, or dieting, is stress. Teenagers deal with a lot of stress inducing situations, such as to do well in school, make friends, get into college, find a boyfriend or girlfriend, and make their parents proud. Stress impacts everyone’s life, whether they admit to it or can handle it in a healthy way or not. When a person who is already impulsive, a risk-seeker, or emotionally unstable succumbs to an overwhelming amount of stress, they can fall easily into the trap of addiction.
Because addictions can be physical, psychological, or both, they can be anything a person becomes obsessed with – a substance, activity, or object. Eating disorders are characterized by many of the things that are known to characterize addiction. Obsession with an activity (such as dieting), ignoring the facts that the activity is harmful (like experiencing the health problems that come from starvation), compulsively engaging in an activity (such as eating an entire bag of chips without thinking), having withdrawal symptoms if the activity is stopped (including irritability, restlessness, and depression), losing control over being able to stop, denying there is a problem, and hiding behaviors from others are all similar symptoms of addiction and eating disorders.
The most common eating disorders, the ones mentioned in the media because of celebrities who have them or because they make for intriguing After-School Specials, are anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. Anorexia Nervosa is distinguished by starvation and a warped body image where anorexics to see themselves as overweight even when they are emaciated and bordering on death. They obsessively exercise to burn calories they ingest and spend a great deal of energy denying and hiding their problem. Bulimics (Bulimia Nervosa), on the other hand, find themselves driven to consume enough food at a single time to feed several grown adults. When the guilt at how much they have eaten sets in, they find ways to purge the food from their bodies, using methods such as self-induced vomiting or laxatives. Bulimics will get so involved in the sneaky, isolated cycle of binging and purging that they will let other aspects of their lives, like friendships and school, fall to the wayside. Binge Eaters are obsessed with food and feel a constant craving to eat even when there is no way they could be hungry – such as when they have eaten recently or stuffed themselves at the last meal. Binge Eaters will lose control over themselves, intending to open a box of cookies and eat just one, then devouring the entire package without realizing it. With each of these eating disorders, mental and emotional periods of depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, boredom, and even anger can bring on the disordered behavior.
It may seem like substance abuse and eating disorders should be entirely different problems, but there are many properties that these diseases share. Countless teenagers will start experimenting with drugs and alcohol because of peer pressure, a lack of parental supervision, or even because they have family members who are users. While eating disorders begin because of a desire to lose weight and fit in, they can also come about because of pressure by peers or a lack of attention from parents. They can be used as much to handle stress, anxiety, and deal with loneliness as to lose weight.
Though they may still be seen in the mainstream as a joke, the seriousness of eating disorders exists on an ever-growing scale. With one of the highest mortality rates of any mental disorder, 10% of suffers will die each year. It is estimated that as many as ten million girls are anorexic or bulimic, as well as one million boys, with only about half of these people expected to recover. And a staggering 25 million people have Binge Eating disorder. In addition to these statistics, it becomes even more sobering to learn that half of the eating disordered also abuse substances, such as amphetamines and prescription medications.
The hardest part for anyone in evaluating their habits to see if they have an eating disorder is being totally honest with themselves. Because denial plays such a large role with addiction it can be hard for someone to take a real, honest inward look and recognize what they might be doing. But this self-evaluation is necessary in order to start on the path to recovery. Finding information about eating disorders and addiction can be relatively easy, with doctor’s offices, clinics, counselors, and hospitals offering pamphlets and booklets to anyone who asks, as well as the enormous amount of information that can be gathered on the Internet. Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating are life-threatening diseases, and though it isn’t easy to recover, the treatment methods used for sufferers have come a long way in the last decade. With therapy, family counseling, support groups, and medication, it is possible to beat the addiction. It all hinges on taking the first step and admitting that the problem exists and help is needed.
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This is going to be tough but, I hope, fair. Please take it in the intended spirit – to help you to become a better journalist.
The lead paragraph stopped me cold. It is full of generalizations and assertions that are unsupported by quoting experts or by citing recognized sources.
Examples:
1. “It is generally accepted that a person can become addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, prescription medication, and illegal drugs.”
Says who? Can you cite specifics or statistics?
Leading with phrases such as “It is generally accepted” is passive. It doesn’t invite the reader to continue either by engaging her interest or challenging her preconceived notions.
2. ”...the majority of people…”
If you mean “most people,” say so.
3. “Something as seemingly harmless as eating can become an addiction if it starts to be abused.”
The word “abuse” has been overused to the extent that it means little or nothing. (I’m tempted to say the word itself has been abused.) How exactly does one “abuse” food? Does the food feel pain when being chewed?
Avoid such cliches.
4. “Eating disorders, long considered “dieting taken to the extreme”…”
Interesting assertion. Can you support it? Otherwise the quote is misleading, giving the impression that you have quoted expert sources.
To address the piece overall, it is well written for something like a school essay. If the point is to explicate a theme and defend it, you’ve accomplished that in general terms.
But it’s nowhere close to journalism, whether for magazine or newspaper publication. You’ve written eight paragraphs without citing a single source.
If you were, in fact, a recognized expert, this might fly as commentary. But even experts will cite sources when writing on issues of social, political or cultural significance.
I’ll stop here for two reasons: if the lead needs this much work it would be pointless to write a critique longer than the article itself; the nature of Urbis’ scoring system discourages verbose critiques.
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First off Your title needs to be changed to Eating Disorders-Unacknowledged Addiction
Most people relate to the Symptoms, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, not just teenagers.
I think you have a good start here But back to the title I think you need to get real in depth with all the disorders and their relationship with different age groups and personal backgrounds or lifestyles
I think your whole article is certainly interesting, and very well written. You seemed to have hit on some very important points when it comes to eating disorders, and have given much information for readers to consume.
Some relatively minor issues I seen (My suggestions in bold added):
+ “Teenagers deal with a lot of stress inducing situations, such as [wanting] to do well in school, make friends, get into college, find a boyfriend or girlfriend, and make their parents proud [,etc].”
+ “Anorexia Nervosa is distinguished by starvation and a warped body image where. Anorexics [tend] to see themselves…”
+ ”..10% of suffers..” [sufferers misspelled]
+ ”...”learn that half of the eating disordered those with eating disorders also abuse substances,”
The following are some tips to consider for subsequent versions:
1) Your lede has a gross generalization. Get some stats that I’m sure you could get from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about these specific addictions and the amount of people afflicted.
2) Next, I think that you have some great fact-finding here and I concede that I don’t know the tone of the magazine you are writing for. With that said, most mags like story-telling, which is at a minimum here. Maybe you could find a teen who suffers from this affliction and chronicle their story, how it happened to them, what their life is like now, etc. And fold in all the facts as you go along so your piece doesn’t read like a list or a report.
3) In the end, you mention how they can find more information. May I suggest, instead of telling them how, you should find the Web sites yourself and create a factbox with the links right in them.
Most readers are more inclined to go to a link provided them instead of searching for one themselves.
4) And in your graf about Anorexia Nervosa, etc. I would mention the diseases before the media and celebrities. The important info here are the disease names and that they are prevalent and then you can get into why they are so commonly known.
I hope this helps. I can’t wait to see your finished piece.
As a high school teacher, I think that my students might find this a little dry. It’s informative, but let’s face it, if a teenager is going to read it and believe it, it had better be INTERESTING.
Anecdotes would help—tell stories about real kids who have suffered from these disorders. That might be a great way to start the piece; you could also end it with an anecdote about someone who has beaten it.
Citing your sources is also crucial. Teens have a lot of people giving them advice, telling them what’s “right” and “wrong”, and few teens see these people as having any authority to tell them these things. Quotations from experts and/or real-life sufferers would make it more valid to them.
Gruesome details about the effects of these disorders might also help grab their attention. Kids that I’ve talked to about these issues are horrified by the idea of their teeth rotting from repeated vomiting common in bulimia.
Star power may be your friend, here, too. While we do joke about famous people with eating disorders, these people are the role models for our teens. Tell more about real-life stars and how they’ve suffered.
I’m sorry I can’t help you get rid of words, but with a topic as broad as this, I would expand it instead.
This is informative and written at a good level, I think for your target audience. I’d cut the paragraph that begins: The most common eating disorders in half so it is a less daunting read. Good work.
This has the potential to be an important article that people should read. You’re touching on a very sensitive and timely subject.
The writing is a little disorganized. For instance, I would take the fifth paragraph and bring it up sooner in the piece, before the discussions of the specific disorders, perhaps even fold it into the other paragraphs, as its contents seem to reinforce things you’re saying earlier.
As for the disorders themselves, I think you need to take each one separately, rather than simply give a quick overview in a single paragraph. the information you could reasonably give to teenagers with short attention spans is still more than what can be put into a single paragraph. I’d do some more in depth research and use that in this piece. Another idea might be to interview some people who’ve been there. A personal story has more emotional impact; it gives the reader something concrete to visualize. With that, it’s not just a disease; it’s a person.
As for tightening up the writing, I won’t waste your time citing specific examples. I’ll give you a suggestion I got on this site, and that I’ve found serves me well: Print out two copies of this piece. Give one to a person who will read it to you, word for word, and use the other to edit what you find wrong or lacking. The idea is “compress, copress, compress.” Use more contractions to give the piece a more conversational feel; go back and get rid of unnecessary “that”s in the piece (another suggestion I got on here).
Your article was well thought out and informative. It was great to see that you had a section on Binge Eaters. Usually binge eaters are ignored during eating disorder articles and T.V. programs. I would like you to flesh out the possible treatment options and causes of death with people with eating disorders.you would stress the dire situation people are suffering with.
Over all I liked your point of view and non-judgemental tone.
It’s clear you know your subject and that you stay focused on it throughout the piece, so congratulations for that.
My main concern with this piece is that I don’t feel like there’s a strong voice behind it. It’s a very matter of fact piece, which is fine, but adding something to liven it up more, to shed new light on the subject and make it clear that you have a passion here, would make it a much stronger piece.
A few suggestions I noticed while reading:
Second sentence could be replaced with the last sentence of the same paragraph to tighten it up a bit.
In the third paragraph-
“such as to do well in school” I think that sentence could be cleaned up in order to make it flow better.
The piece has some errors that may simply have been overlooked when you first wrote it.
I think that this is an important issue. However, you need to consider mentioning Body Dysphoric Disorder, which can be part of any of these eating disorders. It is something that affects the way a person physically sees themselves in the mirror. It affects boys nearly as often as girls, with boys becoming obsessed with becoming more muscular, or in better shape.
Additionally, I think that it would be a good idea to explore how athletes are often encouraged in these disordered behaviors. I ran track in high school and college, and was constantly amazed and horrified at how many of my peers were actively encouraged to lose weight (and be faster, or better at their sport) by any means necessary.
You might look at the DSM IV for the clinical terminology to do with all of this. For anorexics, you’ll see a term called, “enmeshed” family structure. I saw this with one of my friends, who constantly teetered on the edge of anorexia. Her family unit was utterly controlled by her mother, and the fact that her mother had a chronic illness. That dynamic, and the manipulations played out in her family’s structure by her mother very easily set her up to be at risk for this disorder.
I don’t have too much to say about the way you write. You do very well addressing the audience you chose. I think that it might be good, though, to draw a distinction, and remember that kids with these disorders can come from very traumatic backgrounds, sometimes sexual abuse and the like. While they may be exerting control over how they eat, they are not at fault for the things that have happened to them.
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