Health-record privacy impeding medical research

Kathryn Segesser says she believes the current thinking about eating disorders may be wrong.Segesser suspects that for centuries, anorexia and bulimia have afflicted both men and women. She would like to challenge the popular theory that blames modern cultural pressures and unrealistic images of beauty projected by lollipop-thin models."I'm trying to see if, in the 18th century, people understood that there was some psychological reason that people decided not to eat," Segesser said.

"It would help if I could look at case reports."

But she can't.

They have been sealed since 1996, when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was signed into law to protect the privacy of personal health records. Read More

Male and Female Stars Struggle with Eating Disorders

In a world where it is considered beautiful for women to have their ribs showing and size zero (whatever!) is the ultimate for many girls, it's hardly surprising that eating disorders are one of the most prevalent psychological disorders around.

Hollywood is rife with eating disorders as girls and guys are dying to fit the leading lady and man stereotypes.

Dennis Quaid

A new book about John Lennon by commentator Debra Sharon Davis, BackStage Pass VIP, reveals that the male link in the disorder may have been around much longer than thought.

In the book she asserts that John Lennon was bulimic. She writes how he would always be hungry but hate feeling full, so he purged his food after eating it.

"Lennon was confused about his obsession with food," she writes. "Lennon was surrounded by talented musicians, but many had drinking and drug problems - so it was hard for them to see Lennon's purging behaviour as extraordinary. One must also realise that at that time the public and the media were unaware of bulimia as an addiction and health risk - which made it all the more frightening for Lennon. He literally had no point-of-reference on what he was experiencing." Read More

Obesity Drug Qnexa Raises Hopes

A health advisory panel reports that Qnexa, an anti-obesity drug that was previously rejected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), should be approved soon. If it does gain approval, it will be the first prescription weight loss pill in 13 years.

The drug company Vivus is sprinting to be the first company to release a prescription diet pill onto the market in over ten years. The FDA will review their investigational weight loss pill Qnexa for a second time this month. The health advisory panel reports that the drug should finally be approved as the panel of physicians voted 20 to 2 in favor of this anti-obesity pill. While the FDA isn't required to follow the advice of this panel, they often consider such recommendations.  Read More

European Study Finds Anorexia Socially Transmitted: Cultural Hypersexualization of Girls

When a new study described anorexia nervosa as "socially transmitted," the terminology raised some eyebrows. Although the disease often hints at more troubling dilemmas than simply a desire to be skinny, the idea of kids swapping distorted body image like last year's cold is enough to keep any parent up at night. However, child therapist Brenna Hicks tells us that it's not that simple.

"Parents need to be the counter-balance to the pressure that children receive from the media, peers, and society," she advises. "Being aware of the importance a parents plays in teaching children to love themselves and respect their bodies goes a long way."

She confirms that our cultural hypersexualization of girls at young ages can condition many into believing that achieving societal beauty - which is currently quite thin - is paramount. However, parents can combat this by assuring girls that their self-value and worth is not founded entirely in their appearance.

Hicks adds that in her professional opinion, children who have very anxious temperaments are more likely to develop eating disorders anyway -regardless of the kind of company that they keep. She describes eating disorders and anxiety disorders as having "common roots," despite not be "officially categorized together."  Read the Article

So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood

While some people are fighting to keep sex education out of our schools or to limit it to abstinence only, children are getting a very powerful and very damaging kind of sex education from the popular culture. Even very young children are routinely exposed to portrayals of sexual behavior devoid of emotions, attachment, or consequences. Media messages about sex and sexuality often exploit women's bodies and glamorize sexual violence. Girls are encouraged to objectify themselves and to obsess about their sex appeal and appearance at absurdly young ages, while boys get the message that they should seek sex but avoid intimacy.

The average child today spends over six and a half hours a day engaged in some form of media and will see a minimum of two thousand sexual acts per year on television alone. What used to be part of an adult, secret, mysterious world is now public, ordinary, everywhere. Graphic sexualized imagery in advertising, television, movies, music, the Internet, video games, and more is used to capture children's attention, all in the service of getting them to buy more and more - or to pressure their parents to buy things for them. These images aren't designed to sell them on sex, but to sell them on shopping. However, they have many unintended consequences, ranging from sexist attitudes to high rates of teen pregnancy to sexual abuse.

Jean Kilbourne is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. She is the author of the award-winning book Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids. The prize-winning films based on her lectures include Killing Us Softly, Spin the Bottle, and Slim Hopes. She holds an honorary position as Senior Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women.

Join us at Symposium 2012 and hear this compelling message from our Continuing the Legacy Banquet speaker, Jean Kilbourne EdD

Symposium 2012 Keynote Speakers Cover Eating Disorders from Different Perspectives

Jean Kilbourne EdD, Joyce Hawkes PhD, Corrine Gerwe PhD, Joel Robertson PharmD, Mark Gold MD