Folks suffering from depression frequently avoid seeking help for of fear of being ‘exposed’. New research reveals that sufferers of eating disorders may feel even more stigmatized by their similarly ‘invisible’ disorders…
Binge eating was fund to be the most common eating disorder reported
by Australiains. And the most likely to be sigmatized…
And that often means those with eating disorders may be even less likely to seek professional help. The double whammy hinges on the erroneous belief that eating disorders and depression are both the result of personal weakness. Rather than clinical conditions stemming from brain chemistry imbalances or other clinical causes.
Misinformation, misunderstanding
Today we’re going to take a look at one of those Australian surveys that examines an issue the rest of the world seems somehow to have overlooked. This time, it’s a societal situation that now appears to be one of the biggest blocks to folks with eating disorders seeking help.
“Eating disorders (EDs) are growing at an alarming rate, among young Australians especially,” the pre-amble to an abstract of a new study from the land of Aus tells us. In fact, there’s been, “a 62 percent increase in ED presentations among children and adolescents between 2018 and 2020.”
The average person might have assumed other psychological conditions were doing more damage across modern society. But in Australian, at least, Anorexia nervosa (AN) has the highest mortality rate of all psychological disorders, affecting around 30,000 Australians. And approximately 120,000 additional Australians have bulimia nervosa (BM), according to the National Eating Disorders Col-laboration.
What they did
A team from the University of South Australia (UniSA) recently conducted a survey designed to de-termine how many additional cases of eating disorders might be ‘hiding’ under the surface of Aus-tralian society.
The study involved 235 people from the general population, comparing attitudes towards binge eating, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and depression. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups and asked to fill out a questionnaire that measured reported levels of stigma associated with the psychological condition each was allocated to comment on.
What they found
“Our findings show that people with eating disorders face significant social stigma, which can make it even harder for them to seek help,” study report lead author Carlye Aird says. “Misconceptions that these disorders are self-inflicted or not serious enough to warrant medical attention are incredibly harmful.”
For example, binge eating was commonly seen as the most trivial of the disorders studied. But it accounts for more than half of the total one million Australians experiencing an eating disorder.
While all three eating disorders were perceived as more stigmatised than depression, binge eating was linked more closely to weight-related stereotypes, and more harshly perceived.
The takeaway
The researchers argue that increasing public education and awareness is crucial to reducing stigma and ensuring that individuals with eating disorders receive the support they need.
“We need to shift the conversation around eating disorders and challenge the myths that they are simply a lifestyle choice or a sign of personal weakness,” report co-author Dr Stephanie Webb ex-plained. “By reducing the stigma, it will encourage people with eating disorders to seek professional help earlier and improve the outcomes, ultimately saving lives in some cases.”
My take
I would frankly be surprised to find that the situation is materially different in European and North American countries. And I think it’s important to duplicate the Australian survey in those parts of the world to either provide confirmation of that suspicion, or debunk it.
As has been demonstrated in connection with other misunderstood health and emotional disorders, I suspect ‘getting the story out in the open and getting it straight’ are the first steps to succesfully fighting it…
~ Maggie J.