Eating Disorders Archives - Page 6 of 14

Six in 10 older teens in England have ‘possible eating problems’November 29, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Denis Campbell Health policy editor

NHS Digital research reveals scale of issues, with even higher number of 20- to 23-year-olds affected

More than half of older teenagers and young adults in England have a problematic relationship with food, a major survey of young people’s mental health has found.

Six in ten (60%) 17- to 19-year-olds have “possible problems with eating”, according to research undertaken by NHS Digital, the health service’s statistical body.

One in four 17- to 19-year-olds have a probable mental disorder – up from one in 10 in 2017 and one in six last year.

Children and young people from households facing financial difficulties, such as those who cannot afford food, are much more likely to have mental health problems.

One in eight 11- to 16-year-olds, and 29.4% of those that age with a mental health disorder such as anxiety or depression, have been bullied online.

One in six 17- to 24-year-olds have tried to harm themselves.

Jellicle clown: Frankie Thompson on her unmissable feline fever dream CattsNovember 14, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Chris Wiegand

Her cat-tastic stage show is a riff on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical that swerves into emotionally raw territory. The Edinburgh fringe sensation talks about trauma, taboos and the importance of being disgusting

Was there ever a cat so clever? Move over Mr Mistoffelees, because Frankie Thompson has magicked up one of this year’s smartest stage shows with Catts, an unsettling and often wildly funny hour of clowning. It’s a feline fever dream that starts as a riff on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s whiskery musical and finds Thompson mashing up viral cat videos, clips of Postman Pat’s puss Jess and The Simpsons’ Crazy Cat Lady, and lip-syncing along to Elaine Paige and a prepubescent Jacob Rees-Mogg.

In a Puma T-shirt, her hair in buns like tufty ears, she prowls around the audience, pounds a catwalk-treadmill and relieves herself in a litter tray. Thompson’s feat is to do all this while conveying an unflinching sense of the overwhelming pressures and malaise that send so many of us seeking respite in funny cat videos. It’s a show that sounds raucous but is emotionally raw, drawing on her experience of mental illness.

Skinniness is back in fashion, but did it ever really go away? | Eva WisemanNovember 13, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Eva Wiseman

The style press might be reporting that ‘thin is in’, but lurking behind the headlines is alarming knowledge that the continuing obsession has been there all along

I respect the Halloween tradition of successfully sluttifying that which, on any other night, would refuse to be sluttified. Scrolling through photos last week I saw multiple slutty ghosts, multiple slutty Toy Story characters. I saw many, many cleavages, one attached to a Minion, and I saw both Marge Simpson and Cinderella’s bottoms. But while I always applaud the mission, one which never goes out of style, this year I was struck by something else – the skinniness.

“Thin is back,” the style press is reporting, warily. When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s old gown to the Met Gala, most news stories concentrated on the scandal of a museum piece being disrespected. But for women, young women especially, the real story ran way down in paragraphs four and five: it was the extreme diet Kardashian went on, eating only the “cleanest veggies and proteins”, in order to make that sparkly dress fit. Similar diets were happening in student kitchens across the UK and shared online in hashtags and well-lit videos. It’s no coincidence that this culture shift, these Halloween costumes featuring vast plains of taut belly, coincides with the return of Y2K fashion. With the return of baby tees and low-rise jeans came the memory for many of how such clothes helped inspire in us the idea that it wasn’t that these clothes did not fit our bodies, it was our bodies that did not fit these clothes.

Skinniness is back in fashion, but did it ever really go away? | Eva WisemanNovember 13, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Eva Wiseman

The style press might be reporting that ‘thin is in’, but lurking behind the headlines is alarming knowledge that the continuing obsession has been there all along

I respect the Halloween tradition of successfully sluttifying that which, on any other night, would refuse to be sluttified. Scrolling through photos last week I saw multiple slutty ghosts, multiple slutty Toy Story characters. I saw many, many cleavages, one attached to a Minion, and I saw both Marge Simpson and Cinderella’s bottoms. But while I always applaud the mission, one which never goes out of style, this year I was struck by something else – the skinniness.

“Thin is back,” the style press is reporting, warily. When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s old gown to the Met Gala, most news stories concentrated on the scandal of a museum piece being disrespected. But for women, young women especially, the real story ran way down in paragraphs four and five: it was the extreme diet Kardashian went on, eating only the “cleanest veggies and proteins”, in order to make that sparkly dress fit. Similar diets were happening in student kitchens across the UK and shared online in hashtags and well-lit videos. It’s no coincidence that this culture shift, these Halloween costumes featuring vast plains of taut belly, coincides with the return of Y2K fashion. With the return of baby tees and low-rise jeans came the memory for many of how such clothes helped inspire in us the idea that it wasn’t that these clothes did not fit our bodies, it was our bodies that did not fit these clothes.

I have never eaten cucumber, onion – or an egg. Can I cure my extreme food phobias?November 5, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Joe Stone

I’ve always been a fussy eater. Could an expert show me a life beyond the kids’ menu?

Is anyone more reviled than fussy eaters? Exclude the obvious candidates (murderers, estate agents, Piers Morgan) and it seems unlikely. It’s unfortunate that an era in which half the population identify as “foodies” has coincided with one in which the other half are convinced that eating wheat, gluten or nightshades will result in certain spiritual death. Worse still are people who swerve entire food groups on the basis of bizarre childhood whims that should have been abandoned with their teddy bears. I should know, I am one of them.

My diet is comfortably one of the top three most annoying things about me, and I say that as someone whose signature karaoke song is a 10-minute Taylor Swift epic about Jake Gyllenhaal losing her scarf. A non-exhaustive list of foods that I have never eaten includes lettuce, onions, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes (unless in a sauce or ketchup), mushrooms, eggs of any kind … I could go on.

Was Taylor Swift wrong to use the word ‘fat’ in a video? That’s how I used to feel whenever I weighed myself | Arwa MahdawiNovember 1, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Arwa Mahdawi

Some very vocal people were outraged by the video for the new single Anti-Hero. But when you’re dealing with eating disorders, sometimes there’s no escaping the f-word

Want to watch Taylor Swift magically lose fat overnight? No, of course you don’t – you’re not a weirdo. But if you are just a little curious about what I am talking about, then have a look at Swift’s music video for the single Anti-Hero from her new album, Midnights. There is a scene in it in which the musician steps on some scales and looks up sadly as her doppelganger shakes her head in disgust. This visual would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that it was hastily swapped in a week ago, just days after the video’s initial release, to replace the controversial original. In the first version, Swift gets on the scales and, instead of numbers, she sees the word FAT pop up. This upset a lot of people who decreed that, by using the word “fat”, Swift was being “fatphobic”. Swift decided not to risk cancellation or prolong the controversy by explaining herself or defending her artistic choices; instead, she just quietly altered the video.

Perhaps you are confused by all the fuss over the word fat. You don’t need a degree in Swiftian studies to glean that the singer, who has described the video for Anti-Hero as a depiction of her insecurities, was referencing her own body issues, not trying to offend people. While Swift has never explicitly said she has suffered from an eating disorder, she has been open about her experiences with disordered eating. In her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, she talks about how constant media scrutiny caused her to have an unhealthy relationship with her body. “It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,” she says in a voiceover during the film. There were times, she says, when the constant media commentary on her body would trigger her to “just starve a little bit – just stop eating”.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Researchers urge Australia to adopt food labels estimating exercise needed to ‘burn off’October 15, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Emily Wind

Researchers say ‘physical activity calorie equivalent’ labelling helps people consume less but eating disorder experts sound caution

Labels on junk food such as chocolate bars could show how much exercise is needed to work off the calories – are being proposed by researchers as a way of countering Australia’s growing obesity rate.

English researchers who developed the “physical activity calorie equivalent” (Pace) labelling system, which suggests how many minutes of walking or running would “burn off” the food after it’s eaten, will present their research at an obesity conference in Melbourne next week, saying it shows the labelling encourages people to consume fewer calories when compared to other systems.

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Plans to scrap England’s anti-obesity measures ‘national scandal’, say campaignersSeptember 14, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Denis Campbell Health policy editor

Some have warned plans to abandon policies are ‘dangerous’, while others welcome reversal amid rising costs

Abandoning policies to tackle obesity would be “dangerous for the public’s health” and lead to people eating even more unhealthy food, a senior doctor and leading campaigner has warned.

“Assuming that the reports are correct, then I think that it’s a national scandal that they are going to let the food industry let more people become obese.

Shapeless review – harrowing body horror that takes on the nightmare of bulimiaSeptember 14, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Phuong Le

A sense of dread permeates this story of a jazz singer trapped in a harrowing eating-disorder cycle that turns horrific and hallucinatory

The gnawing omnipresence of an eating disorder becomes the source of body horror in Samantha Aldana’s accomplished, visually impressive debut. Drawing from her own experience of bulimia, co-writer Kelly Murtagh is phenomenal as Ivy, an aspiring jazz singer who is trapped in an endless cycle of bingeing and purging. Straightforward in terms of plotting, the harrowing character study opts to render the frightening effects of Ivy’s psychological condition through a distinctly sensorial soundscape.

Sensitive to the presence and mentions of food, Ivy seems to exist outside her own body. Her mind is occupied with the sounds of sweet wrappers being torn open, cereal clattering against a glass bowl, the beeping tones of the register as a cashier marvels at her unusually large grocery order. The camera also stalks Ivy physically, echoing the character’s destructive obsession with her body; she can’t help but stare at every reflective surface.

NHS mental health services are turning children away when they need us most | Tara PorterAugust 17, 2022/in Eating Disorders /by Tara Porter

I have worked with young people for 25 years – it’s galling to see them bounced between overworked departments because their diagnosis doesn’t fit

Lara* was brought to A&E by her parents after she took paracetamol with suicidal intent. When mental health staff tried to understand her state of mind, they heard that Lara had been struggling to concentrate in school and was overwhelmed about exams and friendship issues.

She often felt sad and low. She had developed habits and rituals, packing her school bag and getting to school at a particular time to help her manage, but she also would at times over-eat or self harm.

Every day, more and more young people like Lara are brought into A&E, but a recent report highlighted the problems they have in accessing services. It described support services as “buckling under pressure”, leaving children “ricocheting around services” which are “over-medicalised, bureaucratic, unresponsive, outdated and siloed”.

In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, Mental Health America is available on 800-273-8255. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

Dr Tara Porter is a chartered clinical psychologist and author of You Don’t Understand Me: The Young Woman’s Guide to Life. She has worked in Camhs for 25 years

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