Eating Disorders: Your School Isn’t Safe
On a common Monday of December, with 31 years, Kate Chilver lost the fight against anorexia. The British girl died after suffering almost 20 years of the disease. Her case has been described by the doctors of the United Kingdom as the worst seen ever. At age 12 Kate Chilver began with this disease and since then her life went from specialist to specialist until anorexia nervosa ended with her. Do you want your child, visit a help center daily, with pain flowing through his eyes? No one wants that, that’s the reason we need to talk more about eating disorders, how they can affect students, and how through a selective prevention to the higher risk population of schools that changes how the teens see their body, image, and his life, we hopefully can advance in our endless fight with eating disorders.
Eating Disorders describe illnesses that are characterized by irregular eating habits and severe distress or concern about body weight or shape. Eating disturbances may include inadequate or excessive food intake which can ultimately damage an individual’s well-being. The most common forms of eating disorders include Anorexia Nervosa(obsessive fear of gaining weight), Bulimia Nervosa(forced vomiting, excess of laxatives), and Binge Eating Disorder(no control over how you eat) and affect both females and males. The causes vary from biological factors, as nutritional deficiencies, psychological factors, as negative body image, and environmental factors, as dysfunctional family dynamics and professions and careers that promote being thin and weight loss, such as ballet and modeling.
For battling eating disorders in our schools, our solution is based on promoting balanced attitudes on body image, eating and weight and providing education on the unhelpful physical and psychological effects of dieting and extreme dietary restriction. This program will be in charge of GABA(Autohelp Group of Bullimia and Anorexia) Peru a team of professionals specialized in the prevention and treatment of food pathologies and behavioral disorders. They will approach the selected high-risk groups and classify the individuals with the highest risk of any eating disorders, analyze them and help them prevent any eating disorder before it starts media free eating disorder-related medical sessions . Also, they will give speeches to educate the students about the problems, causes, and consequences about eating disorders and how to feel about your body image. GABA’s treatment model is based on the evidence from GABA Argentina and has a counseling of more than 30 years of experience in the institutions ALUBA (Association for the Fight against Bulimia and Anorexia) and ABINT (Integrated Anorexia and Bulimia). Our funding will be thanks to PRISMA Association, a a Peruvian NGO that designs and executes research and innovative projects that enhance capacities and improve access to opportunities for vulnerable people, contributing to the achievement of a more inclusive society and sustainable development, greatly recognized by all the help they bring to health-related projects like us.
I know you have a lot of questions and need some answers. For example, you maybe are asking, if you are only working with high risk groups, how groups outside high risk will be prevented and treated? As I said, we will be presenting speeches to auditoriums and assemblies in the school. Also as we approach and analyze groups we will be giving basic but important information media talks and brochures. Another question you may have is if how we will be sure that GABA will connect with children and teens, that often ignore every advice that adults give. Our experts in GABA have worked various child eating disorder cases and they know how to connect with teens in more of a deep level. They know how a teen feels like while in this phase and they will assure to improve his or her body image thanks to GABA’s methods and treatment.
In conclusion, do you want your child to be the next Kathie? Obviously not, ruining the health of your kid Is not something up to debate. So, If our solution becomes a reality, we hopefully,in the next future newspaper article, not see a story of another teen dying thanks to bulimia or anorexia, and have our schools filled with happy and healthy students. That’s why we need your help. If you want to see your child playing and jumping healthy as always, donate to PRISMA Association, so we can have all the fund necessary to have this program working. Hope we can make a world free from eating disorders together.
