Life for today's girls
Article Type: Food facts June 2008 From: Nutrition & Food Science, Volume 38, Issue 6.
Girls as young as ten years old are feeling the pressure to grow up too fast,says a revealing new report from Girlguiding UK entitled “A Generation Under Stress”. According to the report, which is based on the results of an online survey of girl guides aged between 10 and 14 and published in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation, today's female pre- and young teens are far from carefree. Family and friendship breakdown, exam stress and bullying were all cited as things young girls worry about, with more recent pressures such as premature sexualisation, alcohol misuse, wearing make-up and losing weight making their lives even more stressful.
Two fifths of the girls surveyed said they knew someone who had panic attacks, while a third said they had a friend with an eating disorder. “Social pressures tend to make young teenagers feel dissatisfied with themselves”,says Dr Peter Rowan, consultant psychiatrist at Cygnet Hospital Ealing's Eating Disorders Unit. “A failure to not have a boyfriend. A failure to not want a sexual relationship. A failure to not have the perfect body of a 19-year-old”. It is easier to lose self esteem and self worth than to grow it. The place it comes from most seems to be relationships with one's own age group, so bullying and failure in these relationships are often important. Family breakdown also means that there is less security and a lack of an emotional safety net when things go wrong as they are sure to do sometimes.
“Eating disorders are more common when youngsters are struggling emotionally, so they are getting common in our society and it is alarming”.
Cygnet Hospitals have a range of services for young people, including the Eating Disorders Unit at Cygnet Hospital Ealing, which offers treatment options for patients aged 16 and over with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, and the Young Person's unit at Cygnet Hospital, which caters for young people between the ages of 12 and 18 years who have acute mental health problems. Cygnet Health Care hospitals are staffed by multi-disciplinary teams,including specialist consultant psychiatrists and medical teams, experienced consistent nursing teams, psychodynamic family, occupational, art and complementary therapists, dieticians and psychologists, as well as teachers for young patients who are still at school.
For more information log onto www.cygnethealth.co.uk
