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Eating Disorders, Mental Health and Body Image
The Public Health Connections

Summary

Brief Video Highlight

The Dr. Lawrence H. and Roberta Cohn Forums
EATING DISORDERS, MENTAL HEALTH AND BODY IMAGE: The Public Health Connections
Presented in Collaboration with PRI’s The World and WGBH

More than 30 million Americans — women and men, children and adults — grapple with eating disorders. These complex illnesses, which include anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder, severely undermine health and cost lives. This event explored the many dimensions to eating disorders, including their biological bases, risk factors and treatment options. What role does body image play, and how do industries, such as fashion and advertising, often promulgate unrealistic societal standards of beauty? How might women and girls, in particular, be affected by such pressure? And what’s to be done? For example, would enacting legislation that requires minimum BMIs for models, or requiring disclosures of digitally altered ads, help? This panel included expertise in psychiatry, children’s health, policy and eating disorders prevention.

Part of: The Dr. Lawrence H. and Roberta Cohn Forums.

Presented in Collaboration with PRI’s The World & WGBH

Image Credit: iStockphoto.com | webphotographeer

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Moderator

Carol Hills
Senior Producer and Reporter, PRI's The World

Expert Participants

Claire Mysko
Chief Executive Officer, The National Eating Disorders Association

Thomas Weigel
Psychiatrist and Associate Medical Director, Klarman Eating Disorders Center, McLean Hospital

S. Bryn Austin
Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; and Director, STRIPED (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders)

Alison Field
Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Brown University

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