.Types of anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is clinically classified into two major types. The two types are restrictive (AN-R) and purging (AN-BP) (Maimoun et al., 2018). In the restrictive anorexia nervosa, a person achieves weight loss through fasting, dieting or excessive exercise while in the case of purging a person engages in binge eating. Purging occurs in forms of over-exercising or vomiting almost immediately after eating so as to compensate the weight that the person gained through binging. There is also another serious type of anorexia known as Atypical anorexia. In this case a person is able to maintain healthy weight no matter how much weight they try to lose. Patients with restrictive anorexia differ from the ones who purge in terms of brain activation, clinical presentation, impulsivity, emotion regulation and self-regulatory behaviors.
2.Anorexia nervosa in times of COVID -19
COVID -19 has impacted Mental Health greatly through many factors, with the major one that people are not allowed to have normal one on one meetings which are socially important to people. During the lockdown, people have gone so much in the internet with less physical activities because of the social restrictions. Sitting at home has changed people’s lifestyles and eating habits which is a contributing factor to this eating disorder. There is physical risk for instance cardiovascular risk in binge eating disorder and frailty that occurs in patients suffering from anorexia nervosa. People are also at a risk of experiencing psychological stress for instance, a person found to be COVID-19 positive is confined in isolation or in cases of lockdowns that occur, when the number of positive cases increases in a particular area. Uncertainty and disruption of one’s usual treatment can be a source of distress to many. There are factors that makes people more susceptible to developing anorexia nervosa like the increased time that people spent on social media. In this Instagram age models and socialites are showing off their well-shaped bodies which puts a lot of pressure on the teenagers and eventually pushes them to develop eating disorders like Anorexia (Ranganathan et al., 2019). Eating disorder symptoms like episodes of binge eating and purging behavior can also be caused by problems in regulating emotions.