National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is wrapping up, but the campaign to tackle eating disorders continues year-round nationally through the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and locally at Murray State University's Women's Center. On Sounds Good, Tracy Ross recaps the week's events with Women's Center director Abigail French and the types of disorders most commonly seen on campus.
NEDA sponsors the week to help educate and prevent eating disorders. They partner with organizations, community groups and schools to spread awareness to have a week of focus on the topics and work they do all year long. This year, the focus was on body positivity.
French says the idea is if we were to focus more on our bodies and ourselves - who we want to be and personal goals, then we'll build up our self awareness and image in a way where the things we don't like about ourselves don't have such detrimental effects on our emotional health.
Some of the events on campus included "mirror-less Monday," where mirrors were covered in residential colleges and the wellness center, and instead had positive notes, like "I believe I'm beautiful." Another day was take-a-compliment Tuesday, where flyers with compliment tabs could be found throughout campus. People could take a tab and focus on it or pass it to someone else.
French says women tend to be more diagnosed than men because symptoms may display differently across genders. Also, a man might not receive the same diagnosis. She says it's a convoluted situation with statistics when it comes to eating disorders. Instead, she tries to focus on positive eating characteristics, focusing on the difference between "healthy" and "unhealthy." This way, it doesn't put someone into a box, she says. Sometimes people will see that they don't check all the boxes and therefore don't engage in healthy habits.
At the Women's Center, they tend to encounter more mild instances of eating disorders. More severe cases tend to not function well in school. Some cases may be like those beginning to lose weight and friends noticing, or fainting at practice due to not eating. She interacts with visitors on an educational level.
