The layout of the website is easy to understand and offers a lot of information about the signs, symptoms, and treatments for disordered eating. However, I noticed that the questions being used are quite general and do not allow for distinguishing between a normal reaction to a stressful situation and an actual psychologically connected symptom of the illness.
An example of a highly generic question asked on this website is the following “Has weight loss, dieting, and/or control of food become one of your major concerns?” Such a question will be answered in the affirmative by most young people who have medical needs to consider when they eat. Such people include those with food allergies, medical conditions, and the like. So, when the website asked this question without looking into and considering other concerns that would be included in an affirmative answer, the site is allowing for a reader who is at their website to seek information, to receive misinformation instead.
Such discrepancies in analysis became a major concern for me after having the chance to compare the questions NEDA asked with another Disordered Eating website. In her article ” Disordered Eating – Time For A Wake Up Call”, author Abigail Natenshon offers not only an informational tool guide to asking the right questions, but she also differentiates between a normal reaction to a stressful situation and a psychological response considered to be disordered eating.
Being a psychotherapist veteran of 31 years in the realm of eating disorders among teens, she has managed to produce the proper questions to be asked when contemplating if a child has a disordered eating problem while considering the average life of a teen that could lead a parent or other people to think that the child has a disordered eating problem instead of a normal reaction to a stressful situation. I believe that if the NEDA website took the psychological considerations that Dr. Natenshon has in regards to the analysis of Disordered eating cases, they would end up with a more informative and highly accurate method of self-diagnosing teens with Disordered Eating problems.
Some of the additional questions I would add to the questions already found on the NEDA website would be, “Do you find yourself in a stressful situation prior to skipping a meal? Do you eat larger portions because of this?” Such a question will allow a teen to analyze his reaction to the various situation in accordance with his eating habits and will show that the reaction is not necessarily the sign of an eating disorder. Dr. Natenshon provided a very good analysis of a positive answer to this question that proves some signs of Disordered Eating is just a normal reaction to everyday stress.
She explains that if a child is worried about missing the school bus, the child will most likely skip breakfast to ensure being at the bus stop on time. But upon arrival at school, the child’s body will feel deprived and will cause the child to eat more during lunch and grab a mid-morning snack as well that might cause the child to skip lunch altogether. Nothing to worry about in such cases. Hence, disordered eating does not exist.
Another thing lacking in the NEDA website is instantaneous access to ways to combat disordered eating habits. Although their Sharing With Ease handout tells a teen how to handle telling an older person about his problem and how the person hearing the information should react, or, in some cases, how to stage an intervention, the handout does not provide the teen with an option to try and get over the disordered eating problem without having to seek professional help from the onset. The teen must be reminded of why food is important to their well being and should offer suggestions on how to lose weight healthily, that not everything they do means they have a problem with eating, or that there are other ways to find a cure to the problem without immediately seeking medical intervention.
Having said all of these things, I can safely say that the NEDA website has a long way to go in becoming the most authoritative source of materials regarding disordered eating. Provided they make changes that include actual differentiation between normal reactions and a certain disordered eating symptom, the website will be well on its way towards that goal.
Work Cited
Natenshon, Abigail H. (2006). Disordered eating – time for a wake-up call. Web.
NationalEatingDisorders.org. (2006). What’s going on with me? Web.
NationalEatingDisorders.org. (2006). Sharing with eeease. Web.