Some of the most unfortunate and deadly mental disorders are those that fall under the category "eating disorder." An eating disorder is defined as "any of various psychological disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, that involve insufficient or excessive food intake (American heritage Dictionary, 2000)." This insufficient food intake is the main characteristic of an increasingly present eating disorder, anorexia nervosa.
             Perhaps the most widely known and recognized eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, affects at least one percent of American and European teenage girls and smaller percentages of males, children and adults. Although there is some variety in the age and sexes of those affected by anorexia, it primarily plagues girls between the ages of 15 and 29 and is found equally in every SES (socioeconomic status) group. Anorexia nervosa is defined as "a tragic eating disturbance in which [people] starve themselves because of a compulsive fear of getting fat (Berk, 2004)."
             In most cases, those who suffer from anorexia have a distorted body image; even when they are severely emaciated, they conclude that they are heavy. In order to deal with this problem, they begin dieting and when they remain heavy (in their eyes) they become unhealthily obsessed. Soon, they begin to shed body mass very rapidly and maintain a size and weight that is well below any projected average for their height and frame. They achieve and maintain these unhealthy states by abusing a variety of weight loss techniques including, but not limited to, dieting, fasting, withholding food, not eating- even in response to hunger, and excessive exercise.
             The most disturbing part of anorexia nervosa is the result it has on those it plagues. Anorexics will lose 25-50% of their body weight, usually in a startling amount of time. For most females, normal menstrual cycles desist because of the absence of
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