Eating disorder movie finally debuts on the cinema. The documentary titled Thin examines the issues of girl culture of being stick-skinny and its mental and physical consequences. The show debuts at a time when there is increasing concerns about young girls and women who are obsessed with the ideas of being thin and looking attractive.

The documentary follows the various ups and downs of four women with eating disorders and in their bid to become thin. It also examines the social impact to those with eating disorders.

In one particular scene, a father finds it difficult to understand why his daugther cannot just snap out of her eating habits. From this, the documentary hopes to spread the message that people with eating disorders do actually have emotional illness. As such, it is not easy for a person with an eating disorder to stop the abnormal behaviour just like that. The mental state of an eating disorder sufferer is admittedly complex and not easy to fully understand.

In another scene in the documentary, one of the women brings her own food to a family Thanksgiving dinner. This scene depicts a real example that eating disorders can cause someone to isolate himself or herself or withdraw totally from company.

Many accuse the media for causing the eating disorder trend. Young teenagers and women are constantly bombarded by media images of models who look stick thin. A fad that started in Los Angeles had designers using size zero models. Size zero models look anorexic. These clearly have a negative effect on the body image of a person.

However, eating disorders all boil down to this. Those at the greatest risk of developing eating disorders have low self esteem and confidence. They measure their self worth on their perceived acceptance by society. Usually, these people have poor family support or have gone through some psychological trauma from young

In many cases, those with an eating disorder mental health problem will go to great lengths to ensure that they look stick thin. They choose to survive on very little and at the end of their meals, vomit out what they had just consumed. However, they will end up hurting and creating damage to their bodies with these eating habits.

Thankfully, more is being done to help those with eating disorders. There are treatment centers now being set up for inpatient care, in recognition of the growing number of cases of anorexia and bulimia.