Eating Disorders in Males

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Psychology - Clinical Psychology Psychopathology Prevention ( Atlantic International University ) language: English abstract: It is generally accepted that eating disorders are a serious concern among women but we are faced with a severe lack of research into the prevalence of men struggling with their body image. Sadly many doctors still do not recognize cases of eating disorders in men with the result that fewer than 5% of all referrals to specialist eating disorder clinics are male (Morgan: 2008).Pollack (1999) discovered that at Harvard Medical School there is increasing evidence that many men (and probably boys too) are becoming increasingly obsessed with their bodies. Men are beginning to diet in unprecedented numbers with an estimated one million of them suffering from eating disorders (Luciano: 2002). This figure of one million is perceived to be understated as males with eating disorders are for too often under diagnosed. Andersen et al. (2000) confirms that eating disorders in males has been overlooked and in some treatment centres the ratio of men to women has changed over the past ten years from almost entirely women to 50:50. In Psychology Today magazine in 1997 an amazing 43% nearly half of the men in the survey reported that they were dissatisfied with their overall appearance. Of those men surveyed 63% were dissatisfied with their abdomen 52% with their weight 55% with their muscle tone and 38% with their chest (Pope et al: 2000). There does not seem to be a specific age at which men develop eating disorders with sufferers as young as eight years old and eating disorders usually appearing around 14-25 years of age (B-eat). Children as young as two years old have already developed damaging eating habits this can lead to eating disorders as the child ages with 5217% of eating disorders persisting into adulthood (Sancho et al: 2007). Morgan (2008) explains that eating disorders and b