ABSTRACT
Nowadays it is widely recognized that eating disorders are no longer confined to the developed West. Despite a low level of public awareness, Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa have become increasingly common clinical problems among young females in high-income Asian societies such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. They have also appeared in the major cities of low-income Asian countries such as China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. They have even been identified in such unexpected places as Africa (Nasser et al. 2001). Although accurate two-stage community estimates of eating disorders are usually lacking in these populations, preliminary estimates provide good reason for concern. Community studies in Hong Kong have indicated that 3–10 per cent of young females suffer from disordered eating. The trend is for this to increase with societal modernization (Lee and Lee 2000). This situation is characteristically attributed to the influx of Western cultural values that privilege slimness and weight control as being unquestionably desirable. AN is considered an imported illness that embodies such aesthetic ideals and impinges on those most vulnerable to fat concern, namely, young females.
