Customer Reviews

Males With Eating Disorders (Brunner/Mazel Eating Disorders Monograph Series)

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I'm fascinated by instances of people getting afflictions not associated with their gender. A woman bravely told me she has ADHD and we discussed how that is supposed to be rare for females. A man came to the office and said he had Lupus. I said I was surprised to hear a man have that and he said he felt like he had a double dip of bad luck. This book analyzes males with eating disorders in the context that most think of that as a "women's problem."
For obvious reasons, this book has several chapters asking if men with eating disorders are alike or different from their female counterparts. One chapter asked how men with the affliction differed from men without it. A psychologist wrote about his own expereinces with bulimia. You would think that a personal chapter would be easier to read than a high-level, numbers-crunching one, but the talk was actually dull. In fact, the chapters become more long and borrowing as you progress, so some may just want to read the first entries in the book.
One frustration about the book is that results are inconclusive. Experts disagree on whether males and females differ here. They aren't sure if rainbow flag men are more likely to suffer. Further, the book may be dated as it cites the DSM-III when I think psychologists are on DSM-IV, and possibly working on Five. Although the book is about men, there are contributors of both genders here. All those involved raise the concern that by calling eating disorders "a women's disease" that makes men in this group closeted about the problem.