How Eating Disorders Awareness Campaigns Can Promote Recovery And Prevention Efforts

Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions that typically involve problematic behavior patterns around consuming and processing food. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. While eating disorders can often be associated with body image concerns and a desire for weight loss, they also often involve complex maladaptive coping mechanisms. Eating Disorders Awareness Week campaigns can educate people on the risk factors and symptoms of eating disorders and help promote prevention efforts and eating disorder recovery. 

The importance of increasing awareness of eating disorders

Many people are aware that eating disorders exist, but they may not fully understand these conditions. It is important to raise awareness and combat misinformation about eating disorders, as they are serious illnesses that can lead to significant physical and mental health complications and may even be fatal if people do not receive treatment. Increasing awareness of eating disorders can help people understand the risk factors of eating disorders and connect their loved ones with valuable resources. It can also help to encourage people experiencing a disorder to seek help.  

Reducing the stigma of eating disorders

Eating disorders can be highly stigmatized conditions, which may result in part from the fact that they tend to disproportionately affect women. People with eating disorders may be stereotyped as vain or self-obsessed. Eating disorders may not be taken as seriously as other mental health conditions, or they may be minimized or dismissed, even by health care providers. Increasing knowledge and understanding around eating disorders can be crucial to combatting stigma, which can create a barrier to seeking and completing eating disorder treatment. 

What is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week?

How to participate in National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

One way to make an impact during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is to use your own social network to boost awareness. You can share promotional materials on social media using whatever hashtags are associated with the current year’s theme (check the National Eating Disorder Association’s website for the most up-to-date information). You can also attend or organize events around eating disorder education and support groups for people in recovery from eating disorders. 

Key messages in eating disorder campaigns

Eating disorder campaigns can emphasize various messages depending on emerging needs. However, many campaigns tend to include messaging on early detection and ways to encourage people to seek help. 

The importance of early detection

Eating disorders can spiral out of control quickly and become somewhat of a vicious cycle, where a person uses disordered eating behaviors as a coping mechanism to process negative emotions but then experiences even higher levels of negative emotion as a result of their eating disorder. Early detection can prevent these thought patterns and resulting behaviors from becoming an entrenched habit, which could make recovery more lengthy and emotionally difficult. Early detection awareness campaigns could target parents, friends, and other loved ones of potential eating disorder patients to educate them about the warning signs of eating disorders and ways to intervene if they suspect disordered eating. 

How to encourage people to seek help

It can be difficult to convince people with eating disorders to seek treatment. Individuals living with an eating disorder may have come to rely on their disordered eating, as mentioned above, and may be unwilling or unable to acknowledge that there is anything problematic about their behavior. Additionally, they may be receiving positive feedback for their weight loss. Increasing awareness of proven techniques to connect patients to health professionals, like providing a supportive environment free of judgment, could help more people with eating disorders begin the recovery process. 

Challenges associated with eating disorders awareness

Those who aim to educate the public about eating disorders may face a variety of barriers. The following are just a few:

Misconceptions of eating disorders

Misconceptions of eating disorders persist in the United States. Many people may have a preconceived notion of what an eating disorder patient looks like, both in terms of their identity and their body shape. People may believe that eating disorders impact only young women and that a person needs to be extremely thin to have an eating disorder. Additionally, many people may believe that eating disorders are solely associated with a desire for weight loss, when in actuality they can be complex mental health conditions. 

How to make eating disorder campaigns both inclusive and effective

Given the misconceptions of eating disorders by the general public, it can be difficult to design eating disorders campaigns that are effective at raising awareness among large groups of people. Campaigns need to be marketed to appeal to people of all genders, races, ethnicities, ages, and socioeconomic categories. People designing marketing materials for campaigns typically also have to keep in mind that eating disorder symptoms can be easily triggered in some people, so campaigns may be most effective if they communicate the severity of eating disorders without using detailed descriptions of disordered eating. 

What organizations are involved with eating disorder awareness and support?

As mentioned above, the National Eating Disorders Association is a key player in the largest eating disorder awareness campaign, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Several government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also provide education and resource materials on eating disorders. The Academy for Eating Disorders also providses information on these disorders, although its focus is more tailored toward raising awareness among health care professionals.  

Mental health support in treating an eating disorder

Although recovery from eating disorders can be lengthy and complicated, it is possible, which is why it can be important to increase awareness of the ways that treatment can reduce eating disorder symptoms. Speaking to a therapist may help determine the best course of therapy for recovery. 

Online therapy for eating disorder treatment

The stigma associated with eating disorders can lead to a pervasive sense of shame in some people. Some individuals with eating disorders may be too embarrassed to speak to a therapist. Online therapy can be beneficial in these situations, as the online format can help provide a sense of distance from the therapist and take some of the pressure off individuals in therapy. They can communicate in a way that’s most comfortable for them, such as audio, video, or live chat. The latter option may be helpful for individuals who prefer to communicate in writing. 

Research has found that online therapy can be as effective as traditional in-person therapy at treating symptoms of a variety of mental health conditions and concerns, including those associated with eating disorders. One group of researchers examined the use of online therapeutic interventions to treat bulimia and found that online therapy resulted in comparable levels of symptom reduction to those seen with in-person therapy.