BOSTON, April 22 (Reuters) - A review of hospital records
is challenging the conventional wisdom that anorexia nervosa, a
sometimes fatal eating disorder, is caused by the preoccupation
with thinness in Western culture. The disease, which killed singer Karen Carpenter, prompts
sufferers to starve themselves, or to use vomiting or
laxatives, in an effort to become increasingly thin. Victims
develop a false perception of their bodies, where they cannot
see that they have literally become just skin and bones. Anorexia nervosa is ``considered to be a
Western-culture-bound syndrome occurring mainly in young, white
women,'' the research group led by Dr. Hans Wijbrand Hoek of The
Hague Psychiatric Institute in the Netherlands wrote in a
letter in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. ``It is
thought to be very rare outside the Western world and in black
women in industrialized countries.'' The researchers examined the records of 44,192 people
admitted to Curacao General Hospital between 1987 and 1989.
They said that they were expecting to find few, if any, cases
of anorexia on the Caribbean island, ``where overweight is
socially acceptable.'' They found six cases, a rate that ``is within the range of
rates reported in Western countries.'' Hoek's team said the six women were all born and living on
Curacao. Five were Creole and the other was of Portuguese
origin, the researchers said. ``Our finding challenges the ideas that sociocultural
pressure to diet is a crucial factor in the causation of
anorexia nervosa and that it occurs only in Western societies,''
the researchers said.
Friday April 24, 11:55 pm Eastern Time
Anorexia's link to Western culture questioned