A significant occurrence has been documented linking the onset of anorexia to a past history of both physical and mental abuse. A recent study showed that over 80% of clients with anorexia and related eating disorders that entered a programme at one clinic, had in one way or another suffered some form of abuse sometime in the life.
It is thought that maybe anorexics will develop the disease as a way of making themselves smaller perhaps even to shed there individual sexual characteristics, for example the sexually abused girl may try unconsciously to shed her breasts, hips and buttocks in the hope of losing her appeal. It is also thought that many anorexics who have suffered for perhaps a number of years from abuse and now have anorexia, its there way of trying to regain control of there body.
