Puts me in mind of a some thought-provoking pieces about anorexia, eating disorders, and other psychological conditions.
“OCD is not a biological reality,” Gillan said, very matter of factly. “That’s what the data increasingly shows.”
A lump rose in my throat. I fumbled for a response. Hadn’t researchers proved that OCD brains are different biologically? (Some neuroimaging studies show increased activity in various cortices.) “Abnormalities in these regions are by no means exclusive to OCD,” Gillan said. “A great many disorders show the same kinds of brain changes.”
I didn’t know this. I thought my brain shared the same abnormalities as everyone else with OCD and that these were the root causes of our obsessions; that we had brains that were measurably different from the brains of people with, say, ADHD or anorexia. I thought this was the definition of “official” diagnosis. Gillan explained that, on the contrary, psychiatric diagnoses are not based on biomarkers, they are subjective constructs."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/13/i-was-the-poster-girl-for-ocd-then-i-began-to-question-everything-id-been-told-about-mental-illness
Hilary Mantel:
But we can’t quite consign Gemma to history, to the dustbin of outmoded signs and symptoms or the waste-tip of an age of faith. When we think of young adults in the West, driven by secular demons of unknown provenance to starve and purge themselves, and to pierce and slash their flesh, we wonder uneasily if she is our sister under the skin."
We denigrate the female saints as masochists; noting that anorexic girls have contempt for their own flesh, we hospitalise them and force-feed them, taking away their liberties as if they were criminals or infants, treating them as if they have lost the right to self-determination. But we don’t extend the same contempt to pub brawlers or career soldiers. Men own their bodies, but women’s bodies are owned by the wider society; this observation is far from original, but perhaps bears restatement
When the fashionable and enviable shape was stick-thin, a sly duplicity was at work. One girl, considered photogenic, could earn a living from thinness; another girl, with the same famine proportions but less poster-appeal, would be a suitable case for treatment. The deciding factor seemed to be economic: could she earn a living by anorexia? If so, make her a cover girl; if not, hospitalise her. The case is now altered. The ideal body is attainable only by plastic surgery. The ideal woman has the earning powers of a CEO, breasts like an inflatable doll, no hips at all and the tidy, hairless labia of an unviolated six-year-old. The world gets harder and harder. There’s no pleasing it. No wonder some girls want out.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n05/hilary-mantel/some-girls-want-out
I haven't kept up on whether or not there's more evidence behind this exploration of neuroscience and anorexia.
It seems that once people get sick, decision-making shifts to a different part of the brain that makes it more difficult to make a nuanced choice. Instead, you see the food and you automatically make a specific choice,” Steinglass said.
These findings confirmed Steinglass’s clinical hunch: Anorexia may be more about decision-making than some form of extreme willpower.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/10/neuroscience-of-anorexia.html