Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders
Eating disorders affect up to 24 million Americans. To put that number into perspective, that's more than the entire population of the state of New York. More concerning is the fact that only one in 10 seeks treatment, which means that the majority of those 24 million people are suffering in silence. But there's something you can do to help.
In 2013, Representative Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) introduced the Federal Response to Eliminate Eating Disorders (FREED) Act of 2013. If passed, this legislation would provide funding for gaps in eating disorder research, improve training for school and health professionals to better identify and treat those with eating disorders and would increase health insurance access to treatment.
One of the research gaps to be addressed would be a better idea of the actual prevalence, incidence and mortality rate of eating disorders in the United States. To date, if you viewed five reports on eating disorders in America, you would have read five different sets of figures. As all public health professionals know, the first step in addressing a problem is to have proper baseline surveillance figures.
The second goal of the FREED Act is to improve education and prevention initiatives. One of the main priorities of this goal is to target school and health professionals who regularly interact with the age group that is most at risk for developing unhealthy eating behaviors that can lead to eating disorders. The FREED Act wants these professionals to be able to confidently identify students who are exhibiting warning signs of unhealthy behaviors, as early diagnosis and treatment significantly improves the chances of recovery.
Another aspect of the second goal is to include eating disorder awareness in the preexisting national obesity initiatives. Compulsive overeating, which can lead to obesity, is in the spectrum of disordered eating. Therefore, federal research that has already been funded into lowering the rates of obesity should also include research into eating disorders. Current federal initiatives to treat America's obesity epidemic have a wide reach, and if eating disorder education can be included in those programs, more people can learn about these issues that affect so many. For instance, if First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" program were to also address eating disorders along with childhood obesity, millions of school-age children and their parents and teachers would be reached.
The third and final goal of the FREED Act is to help improve the health insurance coverage for eating disorder treatment. According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, yet health insurance companies routinely deny coverage for long-term treatment. The FREED Act would require health insurance companies (and Medicaid) to treat eating disorder treatment as equal to that of physical illness. Adequate treatment is essential to eating disorder recovery, but because of the gap in insurance coverage, many people find that they cannot afford the treatment that they need to get healthy.
If you're still not convinced why you should support the passage of the FREED Act, think about all the people you've ever known and cared for in your life. And if you think that you don't know anyone who has ever attempted to control his or her weight through unhealthy means, you're wrong.
Just because someone has never been diagnosed with a full-fledged eating disorder doesn't mean that they haven't felt pressure to lose weight, no matter the cost to their health. And just because someone isn't clearly underweight doesn't mean that they don't have an eating disorder (conversely, just because someone is underweight doesn't mean that they have an eating disorder). The majority of people with bulimia, people who eat large amounts of food and then purge it from their system through either laxatives or vomiting, have a normal, if not high, body mass index (BMI). The problem with eating disorders is that so many sufferers are able to hide in plain sight, because they're either too afraid to be stigmatized by society, they don't know how to seek help or they can't afford the treatment they need.
If you've decided that you'd like to help pass the FREED Act, you can make a difference by writing a letter to your local representative. The website for the Eating Disorder Coalition, an advocacy organization for eating disorders, has templates that people can use. Alternatively, people can write their own letters if they'd like to express a more personal appeal. Today, 24 million might suffer from eating disorders, but together we can help lower that number.
Caroline Pilewski is a second-year at the Rollins School of Public Health from Marietta, Georgia.
