National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
Today starts National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. The theme this year is, Come as You Are: Hindsight is 20/20, by reflecting on the positive steps you’ve taken — including those stemming from setbacks or challenges — toward accepting yourself and others. “Eating disorders are serious but treatable mental and physical illnesses that can affect people of all genders, ages, races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, body shapes, and weights. While no one knows for sure what causes eating disorders, a growing consensus suggests that it is a range of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. Eating disorders are not a choice. Although our current culture is highly obsessed with food and weight, and disordered patterns of eating are very common, clinical eating disorders are less so. A 2007 study found that 0.9% of women and 0.3% of men had anorexia [link] during their life, 1.5% of women and 0.5% of men had bulimia during their life, and 3.5% of women and 2.0% of men had binge eating disorder during their life. The consequences of eating disorders can be life-threatening (Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness), and many individuals find that stigma against mental illness (and eating disorders in particular) can obstruct a timely diagnosis and adequate treatment.”
