Solutions Through Advocacy and Reform

Solutions Through Advocacy and Reform (or commonly referred to as STAR), is a movement started by NEDA (National Eating Disorder Association) to raise awareness of eating disorders and to promote better research funding and insurance support.
This program is hugely important in the saving and betterment of millions of lives.
As stated before, insurance companies have a rather foul track record when it comes to eating disorder recovery funding. This is something that is unacceptable for the health of incredible amounts of people, and it is something that needs to change.
The out-of-pocket expenses for the saving of one's life is completely unreasonable.

Through showing your support for this movement, you will be supporting increased awareness, available treatment, changes in the insurance's role in recovery, and many more very beneficial factors - many of which would be very easy to implement, such as screenings in schools akin to vision and hearing tests already practiced to catch early signs of eating disorders.

Every single supportive hand is invaluable in this program.

Access To Treatment

Treatment is something that is clearly difficult for many eating disordered people to obtain, with only 1 in 10 sufferers being assisted. This is a result of many things, but the foremost is lack of funds. The average cost of inpatient treatment of an eating disorder is $30,000 a month. While this is certainly a high cost, it is usually a matter of life or death. Insurance companies refuse to cover even a fraction of these costs, and cut payments altogether once a patient shows signs of physical improvement (bear in mind that an eating disorder is a mental disorder). Despite this being the sad reality, 3 out of 4 people believe that insurance companies should cover the cost of recovery just like any other harmful psychiatric disease.
I believe this lack of access to proper treatment for the vast majority of afflicted individuals is a large factor in the high death rates of this crippling disease.

Eating Disoders in Men

While men make up a very small portion of the eating disordered population (around 10%), it is important to recognize their unique struggles. An eating disorder is something commonly associated with women, and it is easy to turn a blind eye to the other gender.
A male's struggle with the media, self-image, and their disordered behavior is something that can be quite different from a woman's, but it is incredibly harmful nonetheless. It is sad to me to watch struggling men go unnoticed simply because it is uncommon in our society for a man to face such conflicts.

Awareness needs to be raised for people of all genders and from all walks of life, not just the typical young suburban white female we are trained to imagine when we hear mention of eating disorders.

A Country Turning A Blind Eye

Despite eating disorders having the highest premature mortality rate of any psychological illness, it is one of the least funded. It is estimated that 10 million women and 1 million men are suffering from these horrible psychiatric disorders in the United States alone. While eating disorders have 200% higher diagnosis rates as Alzheimer's disease, it receives less than 2% of the funding. With the death rates of eating disorders being so high, this seems simply outrageous to me.
Something is clearly amiss if the funding for such a disastrous epidemic is so very scant. Unfortunately, not much seems to be changing to correct this.

These statistics and more can be found at the National Eating Disorders Association website.

Countries Compared

I recently looked at various charts and numbers comparing the mortality rates and prevalence of eating disorders between countries. The United States shows numbers rivaled only by one other country on this planet. America makes up roughly 36% of all eating disorder related deaths, and roughly 8 million citizens suffer from this affliction. This is simply unacceptable.

Something is clearly dysfunctional in our society to promote and allow this to continue in our country (the currently #1 eating disordered nation). As I have shown before, the media is absolutely saturated with dietary pollution and ideals that promote unhealthy self-images.
This harmful trend needs to be stopped.

Even the Famous..

You are not alone.
Eating disorders affect people in all walks of life. 

Gaining... Strength, Momentum and Commitment

Eating disorders affect a quiet but giant number of people in the United States. I recently read the book Gaining: and it carefully explores the genetic and psychological (as well as environmental) contributions that promote eating disorders. It's an easy read and incredibly hopeful and offers very helpful information to those just looking to recover or who are already in the process of recovery.