Over 10,000 deaths each year are the direct result of an eating disorder – one death every 52 minutes. *
Anorexia nervosa in particular has the highest death rate of all mental illnesses.
KGNU’s Sam Fuqua and Jackie Sedley sit down to discuss eating disorders, including Sedley’s own personal experience with anorexia.
Listen:
Colorado has a complicated relationship with mental illness – as do many of its residents. In 2022, the nonprofit Mental Health America ranked Colorado last for adult mental health, with high mental illness cases and low access rates to proper treatment and care.
One mental illness that has made recent headlines in Colorado is the eating disorder. Denver’s Eating Recovery Center faced public scrutiny last year when The Denver Post published a scathing article about punitive and threatening measures taken by staff against patients.
Eating disorders do not discriminate based on body type, race, or ethnicity. They are also often invisible – the majority of individuals with eating disorders do not appear drastically unwell. Fewer than 6% of people with eating disorders are medically diagnosed as “underweight.” *
This is the introductory episode to a limited series from Jackie Sedley about eating disorders. Stay tuned for those episodes.
Resources:
Project HEAL
Eating Disorder Hotlines
There are many types of eating disorders. The most commonly diagnosed are:
Anorexia nervosa
Binge-eating disorder
Bulimia nervosa
Orthorexia
Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)
* Statistics sourced from the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).
