April 19, 2021
Society has stereotypically viewed eating disorders as only affecting teenage girls and women. However, one in three people who form an eating disorder (ED) is boys or men. This article will examine how EDs affect male victims and how they can defeat these life-threatening disorders.
The Problem
There are at least 30 million people who live with an eating disorder in the United States alone. Indeed, 10 million males will experience an ED at some point in their lives, but because of the stigma attached to both what is considered having a “women’s problem” and reaching out for psychological help, most will never seek help. Even the personnel that serve in the U.S. military are not immune as 4% of the men who serve were found in a study to have an eating disorder (McNulty 1997).
To make the problem even clearer, here are a few more riveting and disturbing statistics.
Most experts agree that 20% to 25% of the total number of people living with an eating disorder are male. However, the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders estimates the figure to be even larger with 25% to 40% of males forming an eating disorder sometime in their lifetime.
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