Different Takes: People With Eating Disorders Deserve Treatment; How Can We Help Our Struggling Kids?
Opinion writers tackle eating disorders and teenage mental health.
USA Today:
My Eating Disorder Consumed Me. We Deserve To Be Heard - And Our Illness Treated Like Any Other
About 30 million Americans suffer from an eating disorder. This includes binge eating, anorexia, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, rumination disorder and bulimia nervosa. Eating disorders are life-consuming. People who suffer cannot just “get over it.” This disorder consumes your every thought. (Jami Schadler, 11/7)
The Atlantic:
These Teens Got Therapy. Then They Got Worse
Researchers in Australia assigned more than 1,000 young teenagers to one of two classes: either a typical middle-school health class or one that taught a version of a mental-health treatment called dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT. After eight weeks, the researchers planned to measure whether the DBT teens’ mental health had improved. (Olga Khazan, 11/6)
Newsweek:
Big Tech Is Exploiting Kids Online. Congress Has To Step In
Social media platforms know the harm they do to children. Kids spend huge portions of their days in front of screens. About 40 percent of kids between the ages of 9 and 12 use Instagram daily, despite current law ostensibly restricting social media use for people younger than 13. Researchers, including Big Tech's own internal researchers, continue to confirm what American parents already know firsthand: social media use is a key driver of the current mental health crisis among children and teenagers, including growing rates of suicidal ideation and self-harm. (Chris Griswold, 11/6)
