Seeing the unseen: young males get eating disorders too

Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses. While they are often portrayed as disorders that only affect females, one in 10 people diagnosed with an eating disorder are male.

However, the under-diagnosis and the cultural stigma boys and men face means that the actual proportion of males with eating disorders could be much higher.

Nadia Micali, a senior lecturer at University College London in the UK, is carrying out research across several countries on the epidemiology of adolescent eating disorders, their manifestations and relevant risk factors.

Together with Joe Gafton, a medical student, Nadia developed an idea to raise awareness of eating disorders, especially for young males. Together, Nadia and Joe worked on a shoestring budget to create this amateur video. The video, titled Seeing the Unseen, Understanding Adolescent Eating Disorders was developed for a media competition that Nadia’s research funders (the National Institute of Health Research) are running. “We want to increase awareness on eating disorders,” Nadia said.

“We decided to focus on males because we felt that the public is still thinking of  eating disorders as female problems; we think that increasing awareness of how eating disorder behaviours (across the whole spectrum of eating disorders) manifest in males can help adolescent boys who might think they are on their own. We believe our video will also better inform parents/health care professionals.”

I’m sure many people will be more aware of eating disorder symptoms as a result of viewing Seeing the Unseen, Understanding Adolescent Eating Disorders, especially when in a gym environment: