ABSTRACT
The effects of eating disorders on the human body are always serious, often extremely deleterious, and sometimes even fatal. In fact, eating disorders are associated with the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. For patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) alone, the mortality rate can be as high as twelve times that of their unaffected peers (Sullivan 1995). The gravity of eating disorders is intensied by the expanding frequency of individuals meeting the criteria for eating disorder diagnoses, which has reached almost epidemic proportions and appears to be on the rise (Hudson et al. 2007).
