After years of struggling with eating disorders and, more recently, a serious eating disorder, Kwolanne Dina Felix, a new York student, learned this year that the eating disorder had taken over her life and that she was in a position to recover.
Then the coronavirus pandemic struck the United States and, like so many others with eating disorders, Felix saw his condition uncontrollable.
“I tried to get into the pandemic with a sense of recovery, but that wasn’t the case,” he told Good Morning America. “Eating disorders are a matter of regimen and control and I was in a position where I was absolutely out of control. “
“When the global gets out of hand, I felt that the only control I had was not eating ice cream,” Felix explained. “I discovered myself much more restrictive Array . . . I’ve doubled my habits. “
Felix, 21, said the restriction orders and strict social estrangement caused by the pandemic also stripped him of the social that could have helped him recover from his food disorders in more general times.
Trapped in solitary confinement in New York, she described having a “paralyzing fear” of weight gain, component through the weight gain memes “COVID 15” and “COVID 19” circulating on social media.
“‘COVID 15’ was such widespread hysteria,” Felix said. ” I should have stopped following other people and celebrities who talked about it. “
At the height of the pandemic, Felix said he was doing his best by following stories of positive frameworks on social media and relying on virtual sites like The Unplug Collective, a platform that allows black women to communicate brazenly about intellectual fitness and frame discrimination.
Social media influencer Charli D’Amelio, 16, a TikTok star, spoke of her own pandemic eating disorder. When it included an uplink to the National Association of Food Disorders (NEDA), the agreement found a 300% increase in traffic to the website, according to a spokesperson.
“I tried to use my voice when it came to problems with frame symbols, but I never talked about my own struggles with eating disorders,” Charli shared in an Instagram story earlier this month. “It’s so awkward to admit that even your closest friend and family, not to mention the world. I was afraid to say I have an eating disorder, but I hope that by sharing this, I can help someone else.
“I know the riots are something that many others are also fighting behind closed doors,” he added.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, NEDA reported a peak of more than 70% in the number of calls and online chat requests to its hotline at the same time last year.
“This has been an era of greater anxiety for all,” Claire Mysko, EXECUTIVE Director of NEDA, told GMA. “For others with eating disorders, whether they are actively suffering or recovering, the pandemic is an additional stressors.
Jillian Lampert, Ph. D. , head of strategy for the Emily Program, a national network of eating disorder rehabilitation centers, said the program had noticed that telephone and online consultations “went off the beaten track” of the pandemic.
“We’re seeing other people now calling for a sharper and more intense level [of a food disorder],” he said. “So we see that not only are more people calling, but more people are calling in a bigger crisis. “
The nature of the pandemic, with its uncertainty and isolation, makes it one that “ticks each and every box” to put other people at higher risk for eating disorders, according to Lampert.
Mysko is based on the insulating nature of the pandemic, which forced others to stay home and forced food disorder remedies to be virtual, as a particularly harmful element.
“We know that eating disorders are similar to isolation,” he said. “Public aptitude rules with social estating contrast with what we are told in recovery, which is about connecting and getting out of that isolation.
In addition to isolation, the pandemic has caused a lack of confidence in food and disorders of concern for people, disruption of norms and routines, work-related tension and monetary disorders, and social tension to reinvent themselves in quarantine, all of which can be contributing factors. eating disorders, experts say.
The pandemic has also led to an intellectual fitness crisis in the United States, of which eating disorders are part, according to Mysko.
“Eating disorders are very complex intellectual fitness disorders with a strong relationship to anxiety, depression, a history of trauma and substance abuse,” he said. “We want to communicate about this in the context of this intellectual fitness crisis. “
Felix, who sought a remedy in the user once New York City began reopening, said he had learned firsthand the pandemic that his eating disorder was a challenge of intellectual aptitude that was taking over his life.
“When other people communicate about eating disorders, they do it as if it were a diet,” Felix said. “It’s like, no, eating disorders have [one of] the highest mortality rates of all intellectual fitness disorders. “
Eating disorders occur right after opioid overdose as the deadliest intellectual disease, with eating disorders responsible for one death every 52 minutes in the United States, according to knowledge shared through the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
Eating disorders are treatable, especially if an early remedy is sought, which is why, despite the alarming increase in consultations, Mysko is pleased to see so many other people asking for help.
“We listen to other people who have waited a long time [to ask for help] because they don’t feel their joy is validated or has no compatibility with stereotypical narrative,” he says. been in remedy or never asked for help, it can be terrifying. “
“We need to tighten what is there. There are options. There is support,” Mysko added. “Recovery is not canceled. “
If you or know you have an eating disorder, contact the National Association of Eating Disorders (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or NationalEatingDisorders. org.
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