Mental Health and Human Resilience

Biography

Biography: Begum Engur

Abstract

Anorexia is, simply stated, starving yourself to death. It comes from an obsessive fear and a desperate desire to maintain control over that fear. The symptoms of anorexia nervosa include refusal to maintain the minimal normal body weight for corresponding height, body type, age and activity level, intense fear of weight gain or being fat, feeling fat or overweight despite dramatic weight loss, loss of menstrual periods in post pubescent women and girls. Along with excessive exercise, restrictive eating (or binge and purge type) and extreme concern with body weight and shape. Every holiday it was always the same. Endless, insipid observations about her appearance are how big she had become and how tall she was getting. Then last year that comment by her uncle, spoken in a whisper when no one else was around, about how much weight she had gained. She shivered in disgust every time she thought of it. The author was thinking about food or about what she had just eaten or what she was just about to get rid of every minute of every half hour of every day. It was all consuming. That is the obsession of an eating disorder. It takes over your life; it took over my life. The cost has been enormous. Waiting for the food to arrive is always the hardest part. The author was starving, because Ed never lets her to eat any other meal on days that she goes out to eat. All she can think about is food. The author cannot pay attention in the conversation with friends, she just nod her head in the right places. Th e main aim of this speech is to provide a deeper perspective into anorexia nervosa, a very serious mental disorder having the highest mortality rate among females, instead of giving book/lecture-based descriptions about what the disorder is.