Eating disorders (young people)

Myths about eating disorders. Myth #1 people who have eating disorders are always underweight

Jasmin: When the relapse happened, I had to go back to a couple of times because, you know, I was still waiting and it was really bothering me, but she was like, “well, you haven't lost any weight and you look fine.” And it was almost as if, you know, she’d like you to need to deal with it and was quite insensitive about the situation just because I looked fine. And I was like “I might look fine it doesn't mean that I am, I might not be losing weight.” So just the fact that. Yeah, that's the main one. Because it almost made me feel like I need to lose weight and then go back to the doctor for her to take me seriously.

Myth #2 only women get eating disorders

Sam: The doctor said to me “you haven't got bulimia you’re just depressed”. And I'm guessing, and I'm probably confident in saying that that was probably because, you know, I was male, you know, I didn't live up to the stereotype of being young, female. And because my -,  it sort of had nothing to do with body image or weight or anything like that. I think that might have confused the doctor a bit, you know.

Myth #3 eating disorders are caused by glamorous celebrities in the media

Georgia: The amount the media kind of talks about it because of the size zero models and stuff. I think it kind of puts more of a pressure on people to look like that, whereas that often wasn't really the problem in the first place.

Myth #4 anorexia and bulimia are the only types of eating disorder

Suzanne:

What did the GP say to you about EDNOS?

She didn’t really say anything to me about it.

Just that this is the diagnosis?

Well she just said that I had an eating disorder and she said it wasn’t Anorexia and she said it wasn’t Bulimia, she just, she was like, “Yes it’s just an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.” So I was like, “Okay then.” She didn’t tell me the details about it, any information which is surprising because when most people think about eating disorders they think about Anorexia or Bulimia, and all these minor eating disorders, eating disorders, people don’t really know about them.