A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Flikr Images The universal truth of puberty and adolescence is body change, and relatively rapid body change. Teenagers have to cope with all kinds of comparisons, with their peers, with the childhood bodies they leave behind, and with the altered images used in advertising and in the self-advertising on social media. It may [...]
More than half of female university students in Australia are skipping meals before a big night out so they can save calories for alcohol, an Adelaide study has found. The study, by PhD student and researcher Alissa Knight at the University of South Australia, looks into the social phenomena dubbed "drunkorexia". Ms Knight said drunkorexia [...]
Research indicates that there are generally low levels of mental health literacy in the community. General beliefs and misunderstandings about mental health affect community responses to eating disorders. Understanding the facts about eating disorders can reduce stigma, increase awareness and consequently improve the prevention, early identification and help-seeking among sufferers. The National Eating Disorders Collaboration (NEDC) have identified five common misconceptions about [...]
gettyimages Most of the anorexia patients Dr. Joanna Steinglass sees in the inpatient eating-disorders unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute have been to treatment before. While in the hospital or a residential treatment center, they generally gained weight and began to eat a wider variety of foods. But after they left, [...]
Often masked as a health-kick a new form of the eating disorder, anorexia, is manifesting itself in teenagers. When John and Julie Armstrong's 12-year-old son, Jed, told them that he wanted to get fit in the summer of 2014, neither thought anything of it. A keen footballer, Jed designed a regime of exercise for himself [...]
Is brain size related to eating disorders? University of Colorado researchers discovered that girls with anorexia nervosa had a larger insula, a part of the brain that is active when tasting food, in comparison to girls without the disorder. They also found evidence of a larger orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain that signals [...]
The legislation focuses on two elements of the fashion industry that have long drawn criticism for their effects on women and, especially, girls: ultra thin models and the use of Photoshop to make women appear impossibly thin in advertisements. The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps [...]
''Ana'' is not a real person but an identity, adopted as self, friend and foe, the embodiment of anorexia. Her speech is the self-talk and self-hate that typifies a condition that is all about internalising how you look - or think you look - on the outside, and clinging to the conviction that salvation [...]
Everyone's reasons are different. It might be an attempt to regain control of a life that feels like it's spiralling; it can be about expectation and wanting to fit in; it can be about seeking approval or peer pressure. Disordered eating has increased two-fold in the past decade in Australia in males and females 15 [...]
The role of pro-anorexia websites, forums and social networking groups in promoting and worsening the condition of eating disorder sufferers is a major concern. These websites promote anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice rather than an eating disorder, thus normalizing the disorder in the perception of sufferers and those at risk. It is often referred [...]
