This year’s message for National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is “Every Body to Have a Seat at the Table,” encouraging conversations on raising awareness, challenging systemic biases, and sharing stories from historically underrepresented backgrounds and experiences.
The National Eating Disorders Association reported almost an 80% increase in hotline calls and online chats, as of September 2020 compared to the previous year. Noting that “eating disorders really do thrive in isolation,” NEDA’s CEO Claire Mysko explained connections to the various ways our mental health has been challenged by the pandemic in a recent USA Today article.
NEDA Week Blogs, Roundtables, and Resources
NEDA shares important information about roundtables and other resources for the annual awareness week here. Other key resources from NEDA include:
- Support Group Listings
- Helpline (800) 931-2237 & Click-to-Chat (here). (You can also text NEDA to 741741 to be connected with a trained volunteer at Crisis Text Line.)
- Forums
- Screening Tool
- Information on underrepresented voices and eating disorders
- Co-occuring conditions and eating disorders
- Co-occurance of substance abuse and eating disorders
Harm Reduction & Inclusion
Gloria Lucas explores a critical perspective on culture in Rethinking Healing through the Lens of Harm Reduction on NEDA’s Blog. Gloria observes that eating disorders are finally being examined within a social justice framework, pointing to discussions around the ineffectiveness of diet culture and the harm of fatphobia. Gloria explains how the traditional binary view on recovery/relapse creates isolation:
“Not only have I had to deal with the reclusiveness of being a womxn of color with an illness still believed to predominantly affect white women but feeling that I had no community to explore the middle ground of recovery and relapsing.”
Gloria has also created Sage and Spoon, a closed space designated for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Two other upcoming events from Gloria Lucas:
- Thursday, March 18, 2021 | Eating Disorders Harm Reduction Webinar
- Wednesday, March 31, 2021 | Religious Trauma, White Supremacy & Eating Disorders Online Panel (Part 2)
Discussing challenges common to lawyers from a different perspective, Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel, a Kul Wicasa Lakota athlete featured on a November 2020 Runner’s World cover, discusses how isolation and stress contributed to the start of her eating disorder and relapses — as well as how critical support systems have been for her recovery — in the first podcast episode of Grounded with Dinée Dorame (minutes 29-37).
Free & Confidential Consultations:
Lawyers, law students, and judges in Massachusetts can schedule a Free & Confidential consultation with one of our licensed therapists for an evaluation, a referral, or to begin a limited number of counseling sessions. Our therapists can help you figure out how to approach and arrange treatment options and address any other questions or concerns you might have. It makes sense to get help if you’re unsure if your problem constitutes as clinical or whether you have a “problem” at all. Find more on scheduling here.
Related Resource
Eating Disorders Anonymous is available to borrow from our lending library. It emulates the “Big Book” of AA in style and substance with personal accounts of recover, and has a 4.5 star rating on Amazon. To borrow Eating Disorders Anonymous, email jamice@lclma.org. We haven’t reviewed the book yet — but understand from other reviews that it only includes one story from a male, and focuses substantially on anorexia and bulimia with less attention to overeating and binge eating. Eating disorders affect all genders, races, and ages. Find more on current research on male eating disorders (here), along with a personal account from a male college athlete’s struggles with binge eating disorder (here).
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This post is an update to an earlier post, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2020 Starts February 24, which now redirects here.
