It takes a village…or a tragedy

This morning, the United Kingdom’s Southern Daily Echo, who, on January 27^th, reported the death of an anorexic college student, Alice Rae, used the tragedy to buttress their claim that the prevalence of eating disorders is increasing. The Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust, which provides a specialist Community Eating Disorder Service, reported that the number of referrals jumped from 257 in 2006/2007 to 393 in 2007/2008.

To me, while these stats are alarming, they’re hardly surprising. Frankly, what most surprised me was not the jump in the number of referrals, but rather the number of referrals in general. When I think about the statistics extracted from NEDA about how many people have eating disorders, which are not even up to date, I’d think that their referral numbers were for a single month, not an annual total.

In any case, my question is, why does it take a tragedy to raise awareness about eating disorders? It’s because we live in a society that appreciates and feeds on shock value. Headlines about prevention and awareness for eating disorders don’t hold the level of punch as headlines about teenagers dying from anorexia. Analogous to this lies the fact that anorexia has the highest mortality rate, yet disorders like schizophrenia gets more attention in the areas of funding and research. How many more have to die???

Clearly, by the way society reduces eating disorders to something of a vanity problem instead of the mental disorder that it is, more education and advocacy is necessary. It does take a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to raise awareness about eating disorders, or any cause for that matter. Complacency is the death to any cause. So, for today, let’s do what we can to spread the word. Advocate! Advocate! Advocate!