With the ever-growing pressure to be thin in our society, women are constantly evaluating their weight, experimenting with the latest diet, and posting about their weight loss "secrets" on social media. Before and after pictures of women's bodies are all over Facebook and Instagram feeds to show off progress they have made with their weight. But with these successes we also have the social media confessions and complaints about overeating, need for dieting, and upcoming events that require the "perfect" body. A common way women are now expressing their need to lose weight is by proclaiming their new diet of "going anorexic for a week." Based on the connotation, this likely incorporates a combination of unrealistic daily calorie limits, over exercising (two-a-days, hours on the cardio machines, etc.), and daily weighing to confirm that the pain and emptiness is worth the gain (or loss). Today we explore the implication of this "diet" on the portrayal of mental illness in our society.
Image from Twitter user's post. Name has been redacted for confidentiality purposes.
We again return to the social media giant made famous for popularizing hashtags and continuous status updates. In the above posts we see a common theme of "going anorexic for a week" to resolve issues with weight. Some of these posts allude to losing weight for an upcoming event or as a result of overeating on vacation or over the weekend, etc. The reason why these people are posting these types of messages to the entire world is completely unknown to me; however, the underlying messages from these posts are clear. These messages imply that being anorexic can be turned on and off in the matter of a week, which those who suffer from the illness know is completely false. As indicated in the DSM-5, Anorexia Nervosa is characterized not only by low body weight but also by an intense fear about gaining weight/becoming fat as well as a disturbance in the way a person views their body weight or shape. Therefore, this illness is much more than just restricting food intake.
By referring to this illness as a "diet," we are completely minimizing the seriousness of this disorder. I am worried about the message this sends to female adolescents and teenagers who do not fully understand the complexity of this illness. If they start believing this is a diet instead of an illness, then we are only perpetuating the issue of unrealistic body types and unrealistic measures to obtain these body types in our society. Additionally, we are sending the message that it's "normal" to significantly restrict food intake for an upcoming event or as a result of weight gain in order to meet our weight goals. This pattern of behavior is not normal, and we need to keep saying this out loud.
For therapists working with people suffering from Anorexia Nervosa, they may need to do a great deal of work with their client to help them understand that their attitudes and behaviors are not normal and definitely not healthy. These societal messages may be reinforcing one of the primary issues with this disorder - the denial of there even being a problem. Additionally, these therapists will likely have to work with clients to develop coping strategies for dealing with the messages all over social media about weight loss and eating disorder behaviors so that their clients do not regress. Even though various groups have been campaigning to combat these messages and images, we still have a long way to go as a society before eating disorder behaviors are believed to be as severe as they really are.
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