Bringing awareness to eating disorders

(ABC 6 News) – Every year the last full week in February is designated as National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, a week set aside to bring awareness to a group of conditions that not only affect a person’s physical health, including their heart health, but their emotional and mental health as well.

While there are many eating disorders, each condition revolves around obsessive thoughts and behaviors surrounding food and food consumption.
An eating disorder can be classified as someone who has obsessive thoughts and behaviors surrounding food, but not every eating disorder is easy to diagnose.

Rachel Breidall, a licensed professional clinical counselor with Fernbrook Family Center describes eating disorders as, “Either restricting or not eating as much, low body weight, maybe avoiding people while eating. A lot of times there is the association of you kind of are obsessed or feeling that your body is not what you want it to be.”

Breidall says social media apps and picture filters may encourage people to be hyper-critical of their appearance and bodies, that could contribute to an eating disorder.

Experts say identifying an eating disorder early on is important, because if left unchecked it could be fatal.