Dear Santa Susana High School Administration,
We’re writing to you because we’re concerned about the lack of attention eating disorders are given on campus. We’d like to have a speaker come in and talk to the students about self worth, staying healthy versus being thin, and irrational misconceptions of the body image.
All of us have had our personal experiences. One of us having been a victim of Anorexia Nervosa, and another having a friend who confessed to being bulimic. Both experiences had hit home for all of us. How could we know so little about something that, like bullying, affects people every day?
Being anorexic, bulimic, or having a binge disorder is extremely unhealthy. It affects your entire body and physically hurts people.
Anorexic people suffer from bone loss, and in extreme cases being underweight. When being underweight and being a female, being underweight leads to a woman not being able have menstruation. It can ruin a female’s fertility at an early age, because she isn’t getting the nutrients it needs to have that cycle.
If you’re bulimic, you may not be underweight, but you suffer from low levels of potassium and other blood imbalances. Bulimic people also leave bite marks from making themselves purge, and have calluses on their hands from induced vomiting.
Binge eating is over eating due to depression. People who suffer from binge disorder normally suffer from being overweight and being constantly depressed. These people also suffer from fluctuations in weight, and cannot control themselves.
About 30% of teens are affected by bullying; 50%-60% teenagers suffer from eating disorders. Yet bullying is given more attention than eating disorders. From what we’ve researched, most teens are bullied about the same things, while teenagers with eating disorders all have their own unique problem. It’s important to let teens know they can talk, and that this is unhealthy. We think they need to know about irrational perceptions of the body, and...