What is an eating disorder – Eating Disorder Video #5

This video is about the DSM definition of what an eating disorder is. I felt that it was important to go over what the criteria are because many people misuse the term eating disorder. An eating disorder is described as someone who has a severe disturbance in their eating behavior. The most important term in that definition is the word “severe.” This isn’t something that they only think about when they are eating or when planning an event that will have food at it. This severe disturbance takes up most of their thoughts and practically runs their life. When “normal eaters” make plans to get together with friends they get excited to catch up and eat at their favorite restaurant. Someone with an eating disorder would not be excited. An event like this would cause them great anxiety and they may even try to cancel the event multiple times. I hope that clears up any confusion and stay tuned for more videos clarifying the types of eating disorders, such as, anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive/binge eating. It is my hope that leveraging social media whether it is YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn can help me reach more people and spread the word about eating disorders and how destructive they can be to the people who suffer from them as well as those closest to them.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi it’s Kati again! Thank you so much for checking back.

Now today I have some great information for you but the first you may want to grab a pen and a piece of paper because unlike some of the other videos where it’s just a quick “one thing” to remember, like “I need to buy a journal”and take advantage of that.

Today is a little more cumbersome and a little more clinical. What do I mean by a little more clinical? Today I’d like to talk to you about what an eating disorder really is. I know a lot of you think “I already know what it is, I don’t need you to tell me”.

But some of us have never heard of it before, they’ve never really dealt with it. We hear the terms fly around; mostly in some trashy magazines, stuff that
are guilty pleasures but it may say “so and so is anorexic, you know, look how thin she is” or “so-and-so went to the bathroom she’s bulimic” right after she ate you know “an insider” says. We don’t really know what an eating disorder is… we just hear these “terms” being used and from that decide what an eating disorder is.

But, the way that psychiatrist as well as therapists just like myself
figure out that someone has an eating order and actually diagnose them is by referencing our DSM. The DSM is a book that we use and it’s short for the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. What does the DSM do? Why do we have this huge book taking up all this space? It’s something that we use the same way a primary care physician would maybe take some blood work and go through his checklist to make sure you really do in fact have strep throat and not some other ailment. So when someone comes into my office and they’re presenting with some symptoms, I want to go through my checklist to make sure that that it is actually an eating disorder and it’s not actually something else.

What the DSN has to say about eating disorders is that it’s characterized by a severe disturbance in eating behaviors. Okay, that sounds like it could apply to a lot of us. What this really means in real life, is this person has SEVERE disturbances. I mean, when we plan events like “YES!Christmas dinner! My grandma is making that ham… I can’t wait”! or, “I’m going with my girlfriend and we’re going to grab coffee and desserts, delish! I so looking forward to that flour-less chocolate cake.” They don’t have that. You know, that’s NOT how they feel about it. Those events that surround food, which, think for a second, that’s A LOT of events… Everything that we do the tends to revolve around food.

It’s very anxiety provoking for them. It takes up a lot of their time, their thought process. You know when something’s really bugging you and you’re sitting at your desk maybe at work all you can think about is that “other thing”? And you realize you haven’t done any work, it’s been like forty five minutes? That’s how it feels to them. When I say an eating disorder is characterized by severe disturbances in eating behaviors… that’s what I mean. These little instances that a lot of people take for granted; no big deal, great time, good food. Those aren’t very happy times for them. They can be really stressful.

I hope that clarifies a little bit about what an eating disorder is, so that we can kind of slough off the rest of what it is not… What the magazines might say it is or isn’t. In future videos what I plan to do is talk about the different types of eating disorders so there’s even more clarification around what anorexia really is, what bulimia looks like, things like that.

So remember comment below, please give me your feedback, I love your questions, things you want me to further explain, I’ll be happy to do so. Also subscribe, so that when I take your comment under consideration
and put another video out, you know about it.

Continue this walk with me,thanks for checking in. Let’s work harder
towards a healthy mind and healthy body!