It’s coming up soon. I am sure you know someone who suffers from an eating disorder, disordered eating, or even struggle with these yourself. Eating disorders and disordered eating affect more people than many believe. Keep yourselves informed, and not only during that upcoming week. Information and knowledge is a powerful tool at combating stigma, ignorance, and bringing about greater awareness and acceptance of eating disorders.
When talking about eating disorders, many simply think about Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. However including there are other eating disorders that are less publicized, sensationalized, and discussed.
The DSM-IV also includes EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified) and BED (binge eating disorder) on the spectrum of eating disorders, but other eating disorders and eating-related disorders exist, such as Pica, Prader-Willi Syndrome, Night-Eating Syndrome, and Sleep Eating Disorder. While eating problems like as Bigorexia and Orthorexia will not be diagnosed by a mental health professional, they are still pressing issues.These aforementioned disorders are not as heavily promulgated by the media, or even in the medical world, as AN and BN, but they are just as serious.
An eating disorder is an eating disorder, and they do not discriminate between shape, size, gender, race, religion, socio-economic status, age, or anything at all. Eating disorders affect everyone.
I posted this a while ago, but I figured now that Awareness Week is here I would re-post it.
