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Prevention

Prevention starts with knowledge. Learning about eating disorders can undermine judgmental or mistaken attitudes about food, shape, and the afflicted. Beyond that, prevention is any systematic attempt to change the circumstances that promote, sustain, or intensify eating disorders. Primary prevention programs seek to keep the disorder from occurring by promoting healthy development. Secondary prevention addresses a disorder in its early stages, when it’s less likely to be a “lifestyle” or associated with other significant problems like depression. Secondary prevention involves education about warning signs, ways to reach out, and treatment referral.

Basic Principles for the Prevention of Eating Disorders

Every family, group, and community differs in terms of what best serves primary prevention. Adopting these four principles, however, can aid any prevention effort:

1. Eating disorders are serious and complex with physical, personal, and social/familial dimensions. Consequently, avoid simplistic thinking like “anorexia is just a cry for attention” or “bulimia is just an addiction to food.”
2. Because eating disorders are not “just a woman problem,” prevention programs are not “just for girls.” Males preoccupied with size and weight develop eating problems and/or dangerous shape control practices. Moreover, objectification and other mistreatment of women by men contribute directly to two underlying features of an eating disorder: obsession with appearance and body shame.
3. Prevention efforts will fail, or worse, encourage eating disorders if concentrated solely on their signs, symptoms, and dangers. Therefore, they must also address:
   • Our cultural obsession with thinness
   • The distorted meaning of both femininity and masculinity in today’s society
   • The development or bolstering of self-esteem and self-respect
4. If possible, community prevention programs should be coordinated with opportunities to speak confidentially with a trained professional and, where appropriate, to receive referrals for competent, specialized care.

The Importance of Primary Prevention

About 5-10% of postpubertal girls and women suffer from an eating disorder or borderline condition. Many more plus countless men find their lives restricted by negative body image and unhealthy weight management practices. With nearly 20% of our population suffering from a mental or emotional disorder, mental health professionals can never adequately respond to the millions with full-blown eating disorders or borderline variations, let alone unhealthy and unhappy chronic dieters.

Primary prevention is the only solution. Moreover, identifying and changing the conditions which promote eating disorders will improve the psychological and physical health of virtually everyone in our society, male and female alike.