Eating Disorders
Studies on the incidence of eating disorders in the general population are lacking, and the incidence rates available have been based on cases presenting to health care. Very few studies have attempted to calculate the incidence rate of obesity. The criterion for obesity is a matter of definition on a gliding scale from low to high weight. It is difficult and probably not meaningful to define at what moment overweight becomes incident obesity. Overall family and twin studies provide evidence for a genetic contribution to the aetiology of eating disorders (, & 2003). However the magnitude of the genetic effect remains uncertain because of problems with case ascertainment and the low statistical power of the studies to date. Non-shared environmental effects appear to play a substantial role in the liability to eating disorders. The development of eating disorders is likely to involve interactions between multiple environmental and genetic risk factors. Mental ill-health in a parent poses particular challenges for the relationship with the child and his or her psychological development (, & 2003).
A parent who is anxious or fearful of the world may transmit such attitudes, while depressive mood will have an impact on emotional responsiveness and availability and may present a gloomy outlook on life. For an older child a negative effect on peer relationships may ensue, with the child being reluctant to bring friends home, he or she may suffer bullying. Eating disorders provide a good example of the effects of the interplay between parental attitudes and behaviors (, & 2003). The instance of eating disorders vary on the characteristic or background of the person engaged in it. The paper will discuss the behaviorist and psychodynamic view of eating disorder.
Behaviorist view of eating disorder
Experimental psychologists who are interested in human behavior but work on animal models are beginning to recognize the many conceptual opportunities that the newly acquired brain and evolutionary knowledge provide. People can now conceptualize basic psychological processes in neurological terms that appeared terminally stuck in unproductive semantic realms only a few years ago. Neuroscientific riches are now so vast that all subfields of psychology must begin to integrate a new and strange landscape into their thinking if they want to stay on the forefront of scientific inquiry ( 1998) This new knowledge will have great power to affect human welfare, as well as human self-conceptions. It is finally possible to credibly infer the natural order of the inner causes of behavior, including the emotional processes that activate many of the coherent psycho behavioral tendencies animals and humans exhibit spontaneously without much prior learning. These natural brain processes help create the deeply felt value structures that govern much of people’s behavior, whether learned or unlearned. This new mode of thought is the intellectual force behind affective neuroscience. In the traditional behaviorist view, it was not essential to understand such natural instinctual tendencies of animals. Psychologist’s province was largely restricted to examining the laws of learning. The intrinsic limitations of the behaviorist approach became fatally apparent when it was found that the laws of behavior varied substantially, at least in fine detail, from one species to another ( 1998).
In other words, the general principles of learning were muddied by the vast evolutionary/instinctual variability that existed across species. To their initial chagrin and eventual delight, more and more investigators began to note that animals trained according to behaviorist principles would often regress to exhibiting their own natural behavioral tendencies when experimental demands became too severe ( 1998) For instance, raccoons that had been trained to put coins in piggy banks to obtain food would often fail to smoothly execute their outward demonstrations of learned thriftiness, instead reverting to rubbing the coins together and manipulating them in their hands as if they were food itself. Apparently, the instinctual, evolutionary baggage of each animal intruded into the well-ordered behaviorist view that only reinforcement contingencies could dictate what organisms do in the world. These observations were enshrined in the now famous article, The Misbehavior of Organisms, which led to the widespread recognition that there are biological constraints on learning ( 1998). Although the empirical wealth provided by the behaviorist paradigm was vast and continues to grow , so was the barrier it created to understanding the psychological and behavioral tendencies that evolution had created within the brains of animals ( 1998). For a behaviorist, a person who has eating disorder has scientifically explainable attitudes that provide the reason for them to act in such a way. They believe that there is a science procedure that can be done to solve eating disorders. Although the behaviorist view is a good method to use in determining the causes of eating disorders it does not make use the thought process as a means for learning. The behaviorist view did not intend to use thoughts and perceptions in determining behavior.
Psychodynamic view
The idea that the internal tensions in one’s mind were representations of the tensions of early intimate relationships and social. For years, the seeds of mental illness were thought to be found in the fertile field of childhood family relationships. Schizophrenia, autism, and depression were all assumed to be manifestations of toxic early experiences in a person’s life ( 2001). There have always been dissenters from this model of psychopathology, and they have promoted many different kinds of theories about and treatment for mental disorders. But the psychodynamic view created by and modified by his later followers held dominion over the society ( 2001). The psychodynamic person believes that a person having eating disorders may have problems with the mind. They believe that to solve eating disorders, clients have to undergo psychodynamic psychotherapy. In psychodynamic psychotherapy different techniques and procedures that a client undergoes so that his mind related problems can be given solution.
References
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