Why we should pay attention to eating disorders

Ten percent of college women suffer from a diagnosable eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge-eating disorder, while other recent statistics show that over 90 percent of women on college campuses engage in dieting behavior. There are no statistics for New York City alone, but some health professionals regard Manhattan (and its suburbs, where many Columbia students come from) to be an incubator for eating disorders. As self-motivated Ivy Leaguers living in the fastest-paced city in the world, Columbia students innately possess many of the characteristics found in sufferers of eating disorders: We’re self-sacrificing, competitive perfectionists, hard workers, and people-pleasers who set unnaturally high standards for ourselves. Adding these factors together yields a strikingly high number of eating disorders and disordered eating at Columbia.

So what? Why are eating disorders one of the most important health issues at Columbia? Why should we care? Because eating disorders affect the entire community, even if you don’t have one and don’t know anyone who does. Just look at the side effects, and you’ll see why that girl running on the track in Dodge for hours isn’t healthy, why she’s doing more damage to her body than good, and why that person you hear vomiting in the dorm bathroom may be one of the 20 percent of untreated individuals who dies as a direct result of her disease.

People in the throes of an eating disorder may not “look like” they have one, but she (or he) is suffering from it in many ways. Having a food problem—and eating disorders are not just about the food—takes away your life. When you’re sick, you can’t focus on your classes, and you get depressed, have trouble sleeping, can’t participate in meaningful relationships, and certainly can’t be yourself. At a university with a significant population suffering like this (statistics are unknown, but some believe that Ivy League schools have higher proportions of eating disorders than most colleges), it’s no wonder that some days it seems as though nobody takes the time to care for him or herself.

Still not convinced? Well, over your lifetime, at least 50,000 people will die as a direct result of an eating disorder. It may or may not be the girl in your lit class, but it may be someone who, given the opportunity to recover, could have done something—invented a new technology or implemented a new social program—that could have directly impacted you. Because so many people, especially at Columbia, are immersed in their eating disorders, we may never know—unless we act.

Eating disorders are complex diseases. The factors that lead to an individual’s development of one can include genetics, family dynamics, personality, the existence of other problems like anxiety or depression, engagement in an activity in which body size is important, self-esteem, academic pressure... The list goes on. You may wonder how we overworked, over-stressed Columbia students can possibly help eliminate eating disorders when they are such multifaceted diseases.

Here’s how: As an academic institution, we need the counseling centers, Health Services, and other health-oriented organizations like Barnard’s Well-Woman to have more information available to students. They should establish regular programs in which students can discuss and learn about food-related problems and how to help their friends or themselves. The administration should implement procedures so that professors can discuss their concerns regarding the mental health of their students. RAs should talk about eating disorders and other mental health issues with their residents at the beginning of every year. Dining Services should discourage body disparagement in the dining halls and campus cafés by emphasizing the taste of the food and not its caloric or nutritional value. (Hewitt has posters about the health benefits of various foods which are both admirable and problematic at the same time.) The physical education departments, as well as the staff in the gyms, should de-emphasize body size by placing the scales in less prominent places, or by occasionally covering the mirrors by the machines so people don’t have to look in the mirror every time they work out. Just as little things add up to create eating disorders, so, too, can little things help us eliminate them.

There is a lot that we can do as individuals. Most importantly, we have to be able to discuss eating disorders without fear. We need to be able to talk to that friend who looks like he or she is struggling and to voice our concerns regarding our own relationships with food and our bodies. We all need to realize that our unhealthy habits, be they under-eating, over-eating, not getting enough sleep, or self-medicating with alcohol, are only hurting us. Furthermore, they’re setting a bad precedent all over campus. It’s easy to get swept into being unhealthy when everyone around you is hurting themselves. We need to value qualities about ourselves that cannot be measured, such as our love of reading or painting, instead of how much we weigh. We need to stop valuing narrow standards of beauty and realize that, inside and out, we are all beautiful. We are all enough, just as we are.

The author is a Barnard College junior majoring in English. She is president of Students for Ending Eating Disorders.