We’ve mentioned the demographics of who gets eating disorders a couple of times before in our ED series, but I’d like to spend a little bit more time going in depth on this. For the most part, we view eating disorders as disease that afflicts white people, and that is primarily in America and other Westernized countries. Many people believe that eating disorders are caused by Western media and bea... »
I’ve been writing a fair amount on my personal blog about how we as advocates for social justice can both advocate change and accept ourselves as imperfect. I think this is one of the harder things to do and often leads to infighting in movements. But there are times when we simply cannot be any better than we are due to things outside of our control. How to deal when those times pop up? To addres... »
A while ago, we here at TS started a series about eating disorders, and I do believe it’s time for an update. Recently I’ve been spending a lot of my time at Science of EDs, a completely fascinating website that provides a lot of information about studies and the science of eating disorders. A couple of the articles I ran across tackled the idea that a fear of gaining weight is a defining... »
Justin Vacula. Oh Justin, Justin. Why did you have to write an article that denied rape culture and leave it there for me to read first thing in the morning after only getting 6 hours of sleep? I mean really? Because you know what that means? It means I have to respond, and honestly, I’d rather just leave you alone to continue festering in your confirmation bias. But no, you caught me when I... »
I’ve just started working for a nonprofit that provides mental health services to kids, particularly kids with autism and developmental disabilities. One of the perks of my job is that sometimes I get to sit in on the lectures and continuing education classes that the therapists and other clinicians go to, which are pretty damn interesting. The most recent one was about sexuality and disabil... »
This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The goal of NEDAwareness Week is to educate and increase understanding of eating disorders, as well as decrease stigma against them. I challenge each of you to educate yourselves about some new aspect of eating disorders this week, and if there’s something you’re curious about, then please ask in the comments. As you may remember we... »
There have been many, many blog articles written about the shootings in Connecticut, addressing all sorts of questions. However I’ve been deeply upset by a number of the ideas and thoughts expressed in my facebook feed and to my face about what this tragedy should teach us. “We need to deal with the problem of mental illness in this country” “He must have been crazy” “He definitely was menta... »
On researching my last post about the eating disorder demographic, I found that the information I gathered was very much centred on Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. These disorders are a big problem, of course, and are very dangerous- however, I found myself wanting to create a post which explained not just these “well-known” disorders, but other types of ED as well. It seems that... »
