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The silent epidemic on college campus: eating disorders
By Hailey Steidle Staff writer
As we enter into February it’s important for people to recognize the epidemic of eating disorders on college campuses.
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February is national eating disorder awareness month which comes with quite a few stigmas.
Many think that eating disorders are talked about too much, or that by talking about them it glorifies them, however the truth of the matter is that eating disorders are not spoken about nearly enough.
Do you as a college student know the average age that eating disorders start for most individuals? If not, the answer is freshman year of college. Do you know what resources are available to you or your friends and loved ones? Do you know what signs to look out for among those around you? Or are you yourself dealing with disordered eating and not even realizing it?
Roughly 1 in 10 college students experience an eating disorder or disordered eating during their time at college. A major factor for this is the environment that many colleges create on a day-to-day basis that many are not used to.
An excuse to skip a meal is suddenly incredibly easy to come by now that individuals do not have to have sit down meals with their family.
Now students can use excuses like having too much homework, being too stressed or even wanting to be able to get drunk quicker.
Students are dealing with new social settings and friends, they are living independently for the first time in their lives, they are able to make their own decisions about the meals they eat and not have to answer to anyone.
For many, these major life changes can cause a multitude of stressors and anxiety as well as causes for new mental illnesses that many struggle to work through.
Because of these factors eating is the last thing on many people’s minds, or it becomes the only thing that they can think about.
A major struggle with awareness for eating disorders on college campuses is the definition of an eating disorder.
It only allows for a very narrow window of things to be considered an “eating disorder,” rather than disordered eating.
Things such as bulimia or binge eating are often not spoken about or not considered real issues when compared to things like anorexia.
This line of thinking is extremely harmful when you take into account the fact that everyone deserves help, and if people are only looking out for one kind of eating disorder in