-Dorota research

ANOREXIA NERVOSA:

-1 in 100 women aged between 15 and 30, suffers from anorexia -40% of people with anorexia recover completely -30% of anorexia sufferers continue to experience the illness long-term and suffer physical effects Some useful statistics:

-1,6 million people in the UK are affected -20% become seriously ill -14-25 year olds are most at risk

UK Parliament - Publications:' The following table shows the number of diagnosed and admitted cases of eating disorders in NHS hospitals, England, from 1996-97 onwards. Please note these figures represent individual cases and not the actual number of patients (some patients will have had more than one admission).

Most of the 208 patients in Nicholls's study were girls – 82% – but boys accounted for almost one in five cases.

Half were admitted to hospital, over 70% of whom had anorexia. After a year, almost two thirds were still receiving treatment. 73% had improved but 6% were worse and 10% unchanged.

Previous research from the NHS Information Centre has found that children aged 14 to 16 account for one in every three patients treated in hospital for an eating disorder, an 11% rise on the 2,316 cases recorded for the previous 12 months.

A 1999 Office for National Statistics study found 0.3% of 11- to 15-year-olds had an eating disorder, with no one in the five- to 10-year-old age group.

A 1999 Office for National Statistics study found 0.3% of 11- to 15-year-olds had an eating disorder, with no one in the five- to 10-year-old age group.

Pro-ana websites

Pro-ana refers to the promotion of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice. It is often referred to simply as "ana" and is sometimes affectionately personified by anorexics as a girl named Ana. The lesser-used term pro-mia refers likewise to bulimia nervosa and is sometimes used interchangeably -and is sometimes used interchangeably with pro-ana.

Pro-ana organizations differ widely in their stances. Most claim that they exist mainly as a non-judgmental environment for anorexics; a place to turn to discuss their illness, and to support those who choose to enter recovery. Others deny anorexia nervosa is a mental illness and claim instead that it is a "lifestyle choice" that should be respected by doctors and family.

Proliferation

Pro-ana has proliferated rapidly on the Internet, with some observers noting a first wave of pro-ana sites on freeweb hosting services in the late 1990s, and a second wave attributed to the recent rise of blogging and social networking services.

A survey by Internet security firm Optenet found a 470% increase in pro-ana and pro-mia sites from 2006 to 2007. A similar increase was also noted in a 2006 Maastricht University study investigating alternatives to censorship of pro-ana material. In the study, the Dutch blog host punt.nl began in October 2006 presenting visitors to pro-ana blogs on its service with a click-through warning containing a disparaging message and links to pro-recovery sites. Although the warnings were a deterrence (33.6% of the 530,000 unique visitors logged did not proceed past the warning), the number of such blogs actually increased tenfold, with their monthly traffic figures doubling on average by the end of the study.

In a 2009 survey by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven of 711 Flemish high school students aged 13–17, 12.6% of girls and 5.9% of boys reported having visited pro-ana websites at least once. In another 2009 survey, by parental control software vendor CyberSentinel of 1500 female Internet users aged 6–15, one in three reported having searched online for dieting tips, while one in five reported having corresponded with others on social networking sites or in chat rooms for tips on dieting.

Visitors to pro-ana web sites also include a significant number of those already diagnosed with eating disorders: a 2006 survey of eating disorder patients at Stanford Medical School found that 35.5% had visited pro-ana web sites; of those, 96.0% learned new weight loss or purging methods from such sites (while 46.4% of viewers of pro-recovery sites learned new techniques).

I will still looking for new information and upload wikia.

DorotaPikulMDX 15:02, February 15, 2011 (UTC)

AnoukBeijleveldMDX 13:58, February 21, 2011 (UTC)