Discuss the factors contributing to eating disorders in American adolescents.

Answers will vary. The American ideal has slimmed down to where most American females of normal weight are dissatisfied with the size and shape of their bodies. In the section on cognitive development, we will see that adolescents also tend to think that others are paying a great deal of attention to their appearance. Because of cultural emphasis on slimness and the psychology of the adolescent, they are highly vulnerable to eating disorders, which are characterized by gross disturbances in patterns of eating. A particularly disturbing risk factor for eating disorders in adolescent females is a history of child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, although the numbers of eating disorders that are reported as attributable to abuse and neglect are variable. Certainly young women have a very slender social ideal set before them in women such as runway models. As the cultural ideal slenderizes, women with normal body weight, according to health charts, feel fat, and heavy women feel huge. Eating disorders tend to run in families, which raises the possibility of genetic involvement. Genetic factors would not directly cause eating disorders, but might involve obsessionistic and perfectionistic personality traits.