Colleges and universities around the country are reporting an increased prevalence of eating problems among young female students. Difficulties include obsession with food, starvation dieting, severe weight loss, obesity, and compulsive binge eating, often followed by self-induced vomiting (Hesse-Biber, 1989, p.71). Since the beginning of the women's liberation movement in the 1970's, the Western world has seen a severe increase in the rate of eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, in young girls, adolescents, and college-aged women. The questions that must be posed are: What are the reasons for eating disorders among college-aged women? Why has there been such a drastic rise in eating disorders in the past few decades? How can this be prevented? It is the purpose of this paper to discuss these questions (after first defining bulimia nervosa and attempting to explain its etiology) and give an overview of several possible answers, determined following an examination of current psychological literature in this area of concern. However, the reasons that many women have issues with food and eating are myriad and complex. They touch on every aspect of being female, and no single answer sufficiently explains the phenomenon of girls who overeat or undereat as a response to stress. Bulimia, a term derived from the Greek words meaning "ox" and "hunger," is a food obsession in which the sufferer repeatedly cycles between bingeing and purging (Chassler, 1998, p.397). "In comparing bulimia nervosa to true anorexia nervosa, the basic psychopathology is similar; both display a morbid fear of fatness. The anorectic patient will starve, and the bulimic patient, who can only maintain starving for a limited period, eat and purge" (Chassler, 1998, p.397). For a girl who suffers from bulimia nervosa, food becomes equivocal with comfort, relaxation, and escape. The binge begins because a person feels low, often rejected, and she turns t...
