Logged out
Access All our Essays in an Instant
Swap your work for FREE access, or pay £4.99 for instant access
To what extent does research evidence (theory and/or studies) support the view that anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia nervosa are caused by biological factors?
Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Thu Mar 25 2004
Page Preview
On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:
Psychology Essay To what extent does research evidence (theory and/or studies) support the view that anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia nervosa are caused by biological factors? The biological approach to Psychology attempts to explain psychological manifestations using evolutionary theory and physiology. Eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa could be a symptom of an underlying physical disease, or illness may precipitate the onset of such a disorder. Park et.al (1995) studied a group of 4 anorexic females who all suffered glandular fever or a similar fatigue disease before presenting the eating disorder - they argued that the fatigue disease interfered with the function of the hypothalamus, causing homeostatic/metabolic imbalances. However, due to the very small sample size this study has little validity and there is no evidence given to support hypothalamus dysfunction in these cases. The biological aspect with the most supporting evidence is genetics - Strober and Humphrey (1987) calculated that...
Get instant access
- Instant, unlimited access to our documents in full
- Swap your work for free access, or pay £4.99
- To see the full version of this document and 149,430 others
