Grey Thinking » Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt http://www.greythinking.com "being aware of your crap and actually overcoming your crap are two very different things." - christina, grey's anatomy Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:17:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Why a hidden epidemic? http://www.greythinking.com/2008/09/29/why-a-hidden-epidemic/ http://www.greythinking.com/2008/09/29/why-a-hidden-epidemic/#comments Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:00:15 +0000 greythinking http://greythinking.wordpress.com/?p=134 I ran across an article on The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt’s blog, about “Eating Disorders in Adult Women.”  This topic is becoming increasingly popular in ED news… probably because more and more adult women are reaching out and asking for help.  In fact, Renfrew says that a quarter of their patients are over 35.  Anyway, the article interviews Dr. Trisha Gura, medical journalist and author of Lying in Weight: The Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women.

According to the article, adult women don’t seek treatment because:

  1. They feel like a loser for having an eating disorder
  2. They think that they should know better due to age
  3. Until recently, they were so embarrassed and/or didn’t realize they could have an eating disorder in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.
  4. Society portrays the illness as a teenage vanity issue.

I’d like to add a couple of my own to this list….

  1. Their parents are not seeking treatment for them
  2. They are busy taking care of others (like children)… and spending that much time focusing on yourself seems selfish (or impossible).
  3. It’s much harder to take time out of life for treatment.  Leaving work and a family that relies on you is much different than missing some classes in high school.
  4. If they have had these disordered habits for so many years, then their lifestyle seems “normal” to them… and less disturbing than had the ED began six months ago.
]]> http://www.greythinking.com/2008/09/29/why-a-hidden-epidemic/feed/ 3