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Frank Bruni: What the news media get wrong in coverage of eating disorders and how they can improve
['Mallary Tenore Tarpley', 'Mallary Tenore Tarpley Is A Journalism Professor At The University Of Texas At Austin', 'The Award-Winning Author Of The New Memoir Slip', 'Life In']
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There are two mistakes, Bruni said, that journalists can easily make when reporting on eating disorders: “They don’t give an eating disorder the same consideration and gravity they do to other disorders — it can seem to them more a failure of character or discipline than the kind of profound challenge it really is. Men make up about 25% of people who struggle with anorexia or bulimia, and 36% of people who struggle with binge eating disorder, according to data on the National Eating Disorder Association’s website. But recovery from an eating disorder (and many mental health disorders, for that matter) is typically a nonlinear, arduous process, and that calls for nuance and an understanding that eating disorders don’t just go away; for some, they are a lifelong struggle or vulnerability.