e, statuesque poses and freeze for any amount of time (Young 40). This disease is said by psychologists to be caused by dysfunctional relationships between very young children and their mothers, while doctors tend to lean towards a more medical explanation: babies with low birth weight are more predisposed to schizophrenia (Preboth 2). This all varies according to who you ask.Eating disorders are another very common, very dangerous mental disorder, where either a person refuses to eat and excercises themselves to death on no nutrition, or they gorge themselves on amazing amounts of food then purge this food from their bodies quickly a binge. This is most commonly believed to be caused by childhood eating habits, and more importantly, unhealthy body image during adolescence and puberty. This disease most commonly affects adolecent girls and young women, but it can happen to anyone. There is no cure for an eating disorder, and too often treatment is futile. An anorexic or bulimic can not gain weight and become healthy again unless he/she truly wants to. However, by the time it is discovered that an eating disorder is at work, the person’s bodily image is so distorted that he or she will choose to die before “getting fat again” (Young 85). Cures for mental diseases are less than likely, for the fact of limited knowledge about concrete causes. However, treatment is optimistic in most cases, and the sooner a disorder is recognized, the sooner it can be helped, and the prospect for a more normal life is brighter. Major laws have been enacted to ensure some protection for the mentally ill, and care is now more easily attainable than ever (Lippman 14). In reaction to this fact, however, a process that was enacted years ago in effort to get the mentally ill to support themselves, called deinstitutionalization, has attributed to the problem of over 2.2 million homeless mentally ill. Says one scientist: “It’s like 2 s...
