Blog prompt week 10-22-12

I found Liz Fletchers visit to WGS very insightful and interesting. One thing that I found very interesting that she mentioned was that a lot of people think you have to have body dimorphic disorder you will most likely develop an eating disorder when the fact of the matter is that is not true. Many people have things about there body that they wish to change. Being a girl that is normal. Basically she was saying just because you wish your arms were a little more toned or your thighs were tinnier doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to develop an eating disorder. Another thing she said that caught my attention was anorexia nervosa has the highest death rate of any other mental disease with a 60% death rate prematurely.  She said that most frequently the patients die by suicide. One statistic that she said shocked me was 8 million Americans have eating disorders. That means 1 in 200 woman suffer from an eating disorder and only 30-40% if people with anorexia recover from it because many of them do not want to be treated for it because they think that is the only way they can live. In a broader since not just talking about eating disorders she said that 1 in 5 Americans are being treated for a mental illness at any given time. People who suffer from anorexia nervosa often times do not want to be treated which means they don’t want to get better leading them to just get more sick. 

Hopefully as time goes on we will know more information about this disease and be able to help more people over come it. I was also shocked to find out that one of the main reasons people don’t get treatment for it is because many people’s insurance will not cover rehab or therapy sessions for it so many people can not afford it causing them not to get treatment.