Understanding how and why a complex disorder such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa develops is very difficult. It is good to be wary of those who claim to know what the causes of these disorders are because the causes are multiple and probably different (at least in part) from person to person.
However, scientific research has made many strides in recent years and models have been created to understand which ‘pathways’ lead to the disease and which factors increase the risk of getting sick.
Currently, scholars agree that the multifactorial model is the most suitable to explain the onset of eating disorders. This model explains the onset and persistence of the disorder through 3 types of risk factors that act consecutively.
The first risk factors are predisposing factors, i.e. all those factors that may be genetic, psychological or environmental, which increase a person’s vulnerability to develop the eating disorder. The second factors are the precipitating factors, which consist of events or situations that trigger the onset of the disorder. These can be made up of grief, aggression, separation from loved ones, but also apparently not serious events such as a school failure, a change of school or being made fun of for one’s appearance. Finally, there are the so-called maintenance factors, i.e. all those factors that prevent the return to normal. These are both psychological and physical and environmental factors,
Among the predisposing factors there may be, for example, the factors of genetic predisposition (not yet identified, but present), the presence of family members who suffer or have suffered from an eating disorder, have low self-esteem, interpersonal difficulties, perfectionism, being dissatisfied with their bodies, alcohol or substance abuse. According to recent studies carried out by the Padua team, even very early events, such as complications at birth or during pregnancy, can constitute risk factors.
Why are women most affected?
Women are certainly the most affected by these disorders. The frequency of eating disorders in males is estimated to be 10 to 20 times lower than that observed in females. According to some scholars, this difference between the sexes is mainly due to socio-cultural factors: in the last century, the role of women has changed a lot and the female body has become an ‘object’ of interest by the mass media. The woman of our times is a woman who “must” be successful, be beautiful and resemble as much as possible the ideal standards of beauty dictated by fashion and consumerism. According to some scholars, anorexia nervosa it represents a rejection of the female role and a rebellion (or a submission?) to the canons imposed by socio-cultural pressures.
However, it is believed that socio-cultural factors alone are not sufficient to explain such a large difference in frequency between the two sexes. Therefore, the role of genetic, hormonal and neurobiological factors should not be overlooked. One of these could be the role of sex hormones in regulating serotonin (an important brain neurotransmitter involved in the regulation of anxiety, mood, impulsivity, and feelings of hunger and satiety). Some studies have found that in the female sex the reaction to stress produces more frequently an alteration of feeding behavior not only in humans, but also in animals.
