Causes Of Anorexia Nervosa

As was explained in the essay question, “culture-bound syndromes are generally limited to specific societies or culture areas and are localized, folk, diagnostic categories that frame coherent meanings for certain repetitive, patterned and troubling sets of experiences and observations”. Culture-bound syndromes are a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are localized to a specific area. The essay will critically discuss the validity of culture-bound syndromes using Anorexia Nervosa as a case study. Anorexia Nervosa can be defined as a “serious psychological condition in which a person is obsessed with reducing weight so does not eat” ( Surgenor and Maguire, 2013: 1).
Anorexia Nervosa is a serious eating disorder that results

“It is no secret that Western culture is obsessed with youth and beauty, and strives to attain physical perfection. Modern teenagers and young adults have grown up in a world bombarded with social media reinforcing these ideals” ( Edmonds, 2012: 208). So this means that the media is the one that projects or influences these ideal body types that people should have but they are not actually the cause of Anorexia Nervosa. ‘The causes of Anorexia Nervosa are unclear but it is a combination of social, emotional and biological factors’. There are two types of Anorexia which are Restricting anorexia and Purging anorexia. The restricting anorexia is when weight loss is achieved by restricting calories by following strict diets, fasting and exercising excessively. The purging anorexia is when a person takes laxatives or vomits in order to achieve weight loss.
Is Anorexia Nervosa a culture-bound syndrome? To argue the validity of the statement made that “culture-bound syndromes are generally limited to specific societies or culture areas and are localized to specific areas” so it can be said that Anorexia Nervosa is not a culture-bound syndrome. I argue that Anorexia Nervosa is not a culture-bound syndrome because I believe that it is not limited to a certain culture and localized at a specific area although it is said it is limited to a specific society. Hopton,

This syndrome is considered to be a mental illness that would only affect people of this area during winter. Since these Eskimo people live in small structured homes what would happen was that they would come out of their homes and take off their clothing and they would run and jump into the snow and icy water whilst screaming and shouting. They did this because they were irritated and feeling ‘cluster-phobic’ and this act was a way to respond to the stress they were feeling. When they were doing this act of jumping into snow and icy water, people from this society would go out in search for them and rescue them before they die of ‘hyperthermia’. So this is a culture-bound syndrome because it happens at a specific society and area (place). In conclusion, Culture-bound syndromes are those diseases that are limited in specific societies and or culture and cannot be found nowhere else. So therefore Anorexia Nervosa is not a culture-bound syndrome because it is not limited to a specific society as by definition of what is a culture-bound syndrome. Even when the example of a culture-bound syndrome given of the Artic Hysteria is analysed as to how it came about to be a culture-bound syndrome it is different to what has been