Discuss the relationship between personality and risk for anorexia nervosa

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Some personality traits do seem to come before the eating disorder, get worse during the eating disorder, and often persist after recovery. The most important is perfectionism. People who develop anorexia nervosa are often described as model children and model students who set extremely high standards for themselves. They also apply that perfectionism to their pursuit of thinness and hold themselves to dieting standards above what others could possibly attain. Other common personality factors are obsessionality, neuroticism, and low self-esteem. This cluster of personality traits may help explain why adolescence and young adulthood are typical risk periods for the development of eating disorders. Many of the developmental tasks of this life period involve substantial change and encounters with unfamiliar stimuli. Such transitions can be challenging for healthy youth. People who are worriers, tend toward unwavering perfectionism, and find change difficult may experience this period of life as a trigger for an underlying predisposition for eating disorders.