January is Mental Awareness Month
I recently had the pleasure of writing an article on the topic of Mental Awareness Month for The Academy of Food and Nutrition’s blog. It’s predominantly a post to bring awareness about eating disorders, the most relevant mental health issue facing dietitians. The full link to the article is here but I’ll share with you a few of the points right here.
Eating disorders affect approximately 6 percent of the population. This figure does not include those who suffer with disordered eating but do not meet the DSM-V criteria for a diagnosable eating disorder.
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any other mental illness.
Eating disorders continue to grow exponentially each decade despite efforts at research, prevention and improved treatment.
Despite the prevalence of eating disorders, they continue to receive inadequate research funding. Research dollars spent on Alzheimer’s disease averaged $88 per affected individual in 2011. For eating disorders, the average amount of research dollars per affected individual was just $0.93. Currently there are six times more people with an eating disorder than with Alzheimer’s disease.
Eating disorders are still one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented illnesses.
I also wanted each of you to know that I have the pleasure of writing for The Academy’s blog as an eating disorder expert. Here is a link to my author page which also lists previous articles I have written for the blog. You can also subscribe to the page using your RSS feed if you are interested in getting updates on what I write for them.
Thank you for your readership and support!