What Does the Research Say About Ethnicity and Eating Disorders?

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Disordered eating is equally prevalent in whites, blacks, and Latinos.
Published on July 30, 2011 by Marcia Herrin, Ed.D., M.P.H., R.D. in Eating Disorders News

I returned from my vacation to read Nancy’s blog on the Los Angeles’s based the psychiatrist who sees very little anorexia among lower socioeconomic class Latino and black patients. I am researcher at heart so I took a quick look at the studies on the relationship of ethnicity and culture to eating disorders. Here is my summary of the scientific literature:
1. Eating disordered behaviors in community studies were found to be equally prevalent in Latino, blacks and whites.
2. Latinos and blacks are more likely to suffer from bulimia than anorexia than whites do.
3. Ethnic families are less likely to be knowledgeable about eating disorders.
4. Compared to whites, Latino and black patients with eating disorders are more likely to be evaluated by general practitioners than by mental health providers leading to “under-detection.”
5. High levels of acculturation to Anglo American culture increases risk for eating disorders and also the likelihood of getting treatment.
6. The main barriers to seeking treatment in Latino and black patients is not knowing where to go for help, feeling that “I can take care of this myself,” and not expecting to get appropriate help.
7. Researchers conclude that it is a misconception that ethnic minority individuals are protected from eating disorders.
8. There is a need for more accessible and culturally sensitive treatment approaches.
Marcia

Nutritionist Marcia Herrin and Nancy Matsumoto, co-authors of The Parent’s Guide to Eating Disorders, Gūrze Books, (www.childhoodeatingdisorders.com). Marcia is also author of Nutrition Counseling in the Treatment of Eating Disorders (www.marciaherrin.com).
Copyrighted by Marcia Herrin and Nancy Matsumoto

Drawing Mental Illness: Bobby Baker’s 11-Year Visual Diary

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Drawing Mental Illness: Bobby Baker’s 11-Year Visual DiaryBy Maria Popova
Jan 6 2012, 1:57 PM ET
Despite our proudest cultural and medical advances, mental illness remains largely taboo, partly because the experience of it can be so challenging to articulate. But when performance artist Bobby Baker was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 1996, followed by a breast cancer diagnosis, she set out to capture her experience and her journey to recovery in 711 drawings that would serve as her private catharsis over the course of more than a decade. In Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me, Baker makes, at long last, this private experience public through 158 drawings and watercolors — poignant, honest, funny, moving, shocking — spanning 11 years of mental, physical, and emotional healing, a journey Marina Warner aptly calls in the preface a “chronicle of a life repaired.” The book is at once a personal journal and a tenacious thesaurus that helps translate the misunderstood realities of mental illness into an expressive and intuitive visual language the rest of the world can understand, reminiscent of the wonderful Drawing Autism.

To read more click here.

When Mental Illness Stigma Turns Inward

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By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.Associate Editor

It’s said that people with mental illness face a double-edged sword.

Not only do they have to contend with serious, disruptive symptoms, they still have to deal with rampant stigma. Sadly, mental illness is still largely shrouded in stereotypes and misunderstanding.

Stigma also can lead to discrimination. Yes, even in this enlightened day and age, it doesn’t appear as though prejudice and discrimination against individuals with mental illness are decreasing. (This study shows in some cases, it might even be increasing.)

We see stigma everywhere. Every time violence is automatically connected to mental illness in an article or news report, we see it.*

We see it in movies and other forms of media. We see it at work where stereotypes might be perpetuated, where employees are afraid to “come out” with their diagnosis.
To read more click here

‘Mental illness’ not an explanation for violence

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By Vaughn Bell
Slate.com
updated 1/10/2011 11:24:41 AM ET 2011-01-10T16:24:41

Shortly after Jared Lee Loughner had been identified as the alleged shooter of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, online sleuths turned up pages of rambling text and videos he had created. A wave of amateur diagnoses soon followed, most of which concluded that Loughner was not so much a political extremist as a man suffering from “paranoid schizophrenia.”

For many, the investigation will stop there. No need to explore personal motives, out-of-control grievances or distorted political anger. The mere mention of mental illness is explanation enough. This presumed link between psychiatric disorders and violence has become so entrenched in the public consciousness that the entire weight of the medical evidence is unable to shift it. Severe mental illness, on its own, is not an explanation for violence, but don’t expect to hear that from the media in the coming weeks.

To read more click here.

Putting the body back into the mind of schizophrenia

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A study using a procedure called the rubber hand illusion has found striking new evidence that people experiencing schizophrenia have a weakened sense of body ownership and has produced the first case of a spontaneous, out-of-body experience in the laboratory.

These findings suggest that movement therapy, which trains people to be focused and centered on their own bodies, including some forms of yoga and dance, could be helpful for many of the 2.2 million people in the United States who suffer from this mental disorder.
The study, which appears in the Oct. 31 issue of the scientific journal Public Library of Science One, measured the strength of body ownership of 24 schizophrenia patients and 21

matched control subjects by testing their susceptibility to the “rubber hand illusion” or RHI. This tactile illusion, which was discovered in 1998, is induced by simultaneously stroking a visible rubber hand and the subject’s hidden hand.

To read more on this story, click here.

A High-Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills

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PASADENA, Calif. — The feeling of danger was so close and overwhelming that there was no time to find its source, no choice but to get out of the apartment, fast.

Keris Myrick headed for her car, checked the time — just past midnight, last March — and texted her therapist.

“You’re going to the Langham? The hotel?” the doctor responded. “No — you need to be in the hospital. I need you consulting with a doctor.”
“What do you think I’m doing right now?”
“Oh. Right,” he said. “Well, O.K., then we need to check in regularly.”

“And that’s what we did,” said Ms. Myrick, 50, the chief executive of a nonprofit organization, who has a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, a close cousin of schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. “I needed to hide out, to be away for a while. I wanted to pamper myself — room service, great food, fluffy pillows, all that — and I was lucky to have a therapist who understood what was going on and went with it.”

To read more click here.

Canadians with mental illnesses denied U.S. entry

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More than a dozen Canadians have told the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Toronto within the past year that they were blocked from entering the United States after their records of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Time to Talk– End the Discrimination

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A group in the UK has decided to break the barrier that is keeping Mental Health a shameful secret . It is Time to Talk! Their website contains a multitude of conversation starters and information regarding Mental Illness in mainstream consciousness.This website is lighthearted and also contains the video below:

Check out their Twitter feed to see what conversations surround the Time to Talk. Also check out #BeFrank to see who is being open about Mental Illness.

BBC: Dementia and Exercise

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How exercise is helping people living with dementia

By Dominic Hughes Health correspondent, BBC News

13 April 2011 Last updated at 05:09 ET
Exercise – gentle walking, a moderate gym session or even dancing and a sing-song – can help people cope with the devastating impact of dementia, researchers believe.

Quite why, the scientists do not yet fully understand.
But unravelling the mysteries of dementia is the key to finding more effective treatments for a condition becoming increasingly common as the population ages.
And while drugs can slow its advance, there are concerns about the over prescription of anti-psychotics for dementia patients.
At the Redholme care home in Liverpool, it is Wednesday morning and the first gym session of the day is about to begin.

For more, please go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12920308

L.A. TIMES: Pain Process is Similar for Emotional and Physical Stress

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By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

April 4, 2011

Across cultures and language divides, people talk about the sting of social rejection as if it were a physical pain. We feel “burned” by a partner’s infidelity, “wounded” by a friend’s harsh words, “crushed” when a loved one fails us, “heartache” when spurned by a lover.

There’s a reason for that linguistic conflation, says a growing community of pain researchers: In our brains too, physical and social pain share much the same neural circuitry. In many ways, in fact, your brain may scarcely make a distinction between a verbal and physical insult.

So the well-worn parental reassurance that “sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you” is false, these scientists say. And they have the pictures to prove it.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-mood-pain-20110404,0,6296917.story