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Veronica Chavez
Instructor McCann
English 1303.113
November 5, 2023
Eating Disorder Diagnosis and the Relevance of the Corresponding Fears

Eating disorders are a mental illness that affect individuals in different ways. To

generalize the groups, we can identify them as suffering from Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, and

Binge Eating Disorder. Each of these presents the need for different treatments in the process of

assisting the individuals overcome the disease. Authors Levinson and Brown with the use of

pathos are utilized when the authors wrote about the death rates in eating disorders, ethos when

evaluating the participants overall corresponding and relatively common fears in the patients,

and logos when discussing results to give support to the claim that fear and anxiety are factors

for eating disorder pathology. The article first presents its pathos by denoting that those afflicted

with eating disorders represent the highest risk of death amongst those suffering from mental

illness. In a search for treatment of the various eating disorders, a study which establishes ethos

using careful evaluation of and selection of participants by highly trained individuals was

conducted to attempt to identify those fears.(Brown et. al 3) The questionnaire included various

yes or no questions and the level of intensity of each particular fear. The results of which

represent the logos of the article’s case study.

Another example of the use of logos that can be found in this essay was in the formation

of their research. The study group was comprised of 229 participants from all over the world

between the ages of 15 and 66 years of age. (Brown et. al 3) Prior to being selected, the diagnosis

for each potential candidate were evaluated and phone interviews were conducted to confirm the

affliction. Four different evaluations were conducted with a 93% consensus of the diagnosis.
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This high level of consensus creates the ethos necessary to provide a sense of confidence in the

case study participant selections. The participants responded to 31 item interview questions

related to their fears when dealing with their affliction and designated a ranking for each of those

fears. This is section previously discussed is the more ethical approach in the article that provides

the audience with a sense of trustworthiness in the authors research trials.

The results would produce the top three eating disorder fears and six subscale ratings of

those fears. These fairly conclusive results provided the logos.(Brown et. al 4) The highest

result amongst all the participants regardless of diagnosis was the fear of gaining weight closely

followed by the fear of food. These results corresponded with the existing hypothesis that the

fear of weight gain and food would be the dominating factors in eating disorder afflictions.

Those suffering with anorexia nervosa which tend to have below normal low body weight

experienced a higher fear of food and those with Bulimia which maintained normal body weight

levels, demonstrated a higher fear of gaining weight. These two dominating afflictions were

closely followed by the fear of judgment which was a more prevalent fear among those suffering

from Binge eating disorder and tending to be at above normal weight level or obese. The

information presented in this paragraph was a representation of logos. This information is solely

based on the logic and reasoning presented in this section of the article.

In the data analysis (Brown et. al 4) there were a total of 668 submissions; of all these

668 submissions there was prominently three recurring fears that were presented by the

participants. Most of these fears were put into categories and any other fears that were not

applicable to the already existing construct were placed in a different bracket titled “Other.” Then

each of these fears were analyzed by the subscale. The subscale is basically the fears in specified

categories and the subscale total would be the mean of the total items in the scale.
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A Pearson χ2 test was done, Pearson χ2 is a test that is conducted in order to find if there

was a difference in top Eating disorder fears endorsed by subscale between the four primary

diagnoses. The Pearson χ2 test is another example of logos represented in this article. (Brown et.

al 4) In the process of this testing certain individuals were removed from the testing, these people

being those with ARFID (avoidant reconstructive food intake disorder). These certain people

were removed due to the differing psychological aspects of their disorder. The results of this

were that there was no multicollinearity, as assessed by Pearson correlation.

In the next sections of the article there are various tables with information provided all of

which all represent logos. (Brown et. al 5) The result analysis paragraph following the diagrams

were written to provide the details of the research in the tables, the data analysis, to sum up the

information in the diagrams was essentially participants who are underweight tend to endorse

fear of food, those with normal weight often endorsed gaining weight, and participants who were

either overweight or obese endorsed fear of judgment.

It is to be noted that when the authors were composing this article one factor that may

have been discussed is the idea that the authors took into account who their audience may be. By

their use of diction the author is creating a safe, relatable, environment in which the audience can

easily understand what is being explained to them. For example imagine a doctor speaking to

another doctor with medical jargon that someone with their level of education can decipher, then

imagine a doctor spewing medical jargon to a patient who is not in the same field of work. The

way this example correlates with this article's authors Brown and Levinson and in their efforts in

trying to make their explanation easy to understand for their target audiences.

In conclusion this article had a large abundance of logos of the article due to the fact that

almost a quarter of the work in the article was made up of diagrams and tables of data that was
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crucial to the visualization for the audience in the latter section. The first rhetorical device that I

was able to identify in the article was the use of pathos when the authors were conveying the

message that there are situations in which the result of these illnesses can have fatal results. The

next rhetorical device that was identified in the article was ethos which was not very prominent

in this article, yet is present in the article when there is consensus within patients in their studies

and when they speak of fears that people who have these illnesses have to fight or deal with.

Lastly, logos are the most prominent in this article like previously mentioned. Of the rhetoric

logos that was identified in this article is firstly when the authors establish credibility in

themselves by listing their degree. Overall the article was heavily comprised of the rhetorical

device logos in the article.

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Works Cited:

Pearson’s χ 2 test, Duke.edu, 10 December 2010

https://www2.stat.duke.edu/courses/Fall10/sta114/Lab10.pdf

Mackenzie L. Brown and Cheri A. Levinson, Core eating disorder fears: Prevalence and
differences in eating disorder fears across eating disorder diagnoses, pp 1-7,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/eat.23728