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The bill for Mental Health Parity was passed in the House of Representatives. This is wonderful news for those of us with mental illness- indeed for all of us. This is also about damn time already.

I don't understand why, in today's day and age, mental illnesses are somehow considered separate from all of the other illnesses of the human body. Last time I checked, the brain was still part of the body. It's true, mental illness have a social construct, but so does every other illness out there.

Reclassifying mental illness as a brain disease on par with all of the other diseases out there (like cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, jock itch) means that insurance companies would have to begin to pay for coverage of these illnesses. This costs money- as I well know. Mental illness can be difficult and expensive to treat. But so is cancer. We could fault smokers for developing lung cancer and then refuse to pay for treatment. It's their fault. If they didn't have an oral fixation, if they weren't so spineless when faced with quitting, then they wouldn't have developed cancer. So screw them. Why should we pay for their treatment?

Because they're people. And you don't choose cancer.

Just as you don't choose anorexia. Or depression. Or schizophrenia.

In a press release from the Eating Disorders Coalition, director Marc Lerro said this:

Eating disorders were front and center in the debate leading to yesterday’s passage of mental health parity in the U.S. House of Representatives. The House passed the parity bill by a vote of 268 to 148.The House version of a national mental health parity bill includes broad definitions of mental illness that would include eating disorders. A Senate bill passed last year offers fewer protections but is likely to become the final version that Congress will send for the president’s signature. The Eating Disorders Coalition has supported both House and Senate versions, but prefers the House bill.

Yesterday’s action in the House marks the first time in 12 years that mental health parity has been brought to a vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to schedule a vote, reversing the long-held opposition of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The EDC was in the front row during yesterday’s rally at the Capitol.

Now that the National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is over, I'm starting to mull over all of the news coverage on eating disorders this week. Most of it was kind of disappointing. It tended, by and large, to perpetuate the myths about eating disorders. Among them:

• That you need to resolve underlying issues before you can recover. (Although, to be honest, this article did highlight the need for more ED/chemical dependency treatment programs)


• That all people with eating disorders are obsessed with body image. This is as much a side effect of starvation as it is a cause of eating disorders. Then again, our whole society is obsessed with body image, so go figure. My issue is that articles like this make people with EDs sound like a bunch of vain nitwits with nothing better to do than obsess about how they look.


• That glamorous celebrities are the cause of eating disorders in older women. I can't claim it for all women, but most have had some sort of disordered eating prior to the onset of a full-blown ED later in life. Some times, an eating disorder in youth was never properly treated. But that doesn't matter- no amount of Desperate Housewives reruns will give you an eating disorder.


• That anorexia sufferers don't eat- they just live on 15 cups of coffee a day. People with anorexia do eat; it's the amount and types of food that are strictly, rigidly, and obsessively regulated. Second of all, you're not living on 15 cups of coffee per day. You're dying on 15 cups of coffee per day.

Welcome to another Saturday Smorgasbord- this time, actually appearing on Saturday! Like in weeks past, I've blogged on a number of the doozy stories thus far. However, there are always some good gems that lie just below the surface. Like these:

It's Time to Shut Up About the Cost of Obesity. An article on Slate.com, the author reports on the absurdity of obesity costs. Instead, he urges, "We're all interested in the most efficient ways to extend life spans and improve our quality of life. But the rhetoric of wasted fat dollars does little for our health; the claim that obesity costs the government $1 trillion is absurd at best and self-fulfilling at worst. Instead, the presidential candidates should pledge support for a federal ban on weight-based discrimination. If we stop blaming fat people for our problems, they might start feeling better—and start saving us money."

Bringing CBT to remote populations. Researcher Dr. Jim Mitchell at the University of North Dakota, Fargo, and director of the Neuropsychiatric Research Institute realized that better treatments for eating disorders don't do a lot of good if you can't get them to the people who need them. Because ND and Minnesota have a lot of very remote locations, he developed a cognitive-behavioral therapy program that connects therapists and patients with webcams and TVs. His research showed that this was just as effective as face-to-face CBT.

Cortisol and impulse control in EDs. (No link for this one- it's in a research journal. If you want the pdf, let me know and I'll email it to you.) Cortisol is a chemical produced at higher levels during times of stress. Researchers have long known a link between eating disorders (especially anorexia) and cortisol levels, though the cause and effect hasn't been teased out. There has been some speculation that ED behaviors (and self-harm) can help raise abnormally low cortisol levels in sufferers by putting the body under stress. People with EDs have also been found to have elevated cortisol levels, although the proportion is different depending on diagnosis and subtype. Researchers in Spain found that ED sufferers with impulse control problems had especially low cortisol levels, which underscores some of the neurological differences even among people with eating disorders. How this explains the migration of people from anorexia to bulimia or vice versa is beyond me. Nonetheless, it is important in beginning to tease apart the complexities of eating disorders.

Again, if you stumble across any good news stories or research, please feel free to send them along. My email is in my profile.

This is my second smorgasbord, unfortunately arriving a day late. I actually totally forgot until this afternoon. So as not to further starve you of the good, the bad, and the ugly in eating disorders news and research, here we go:

The Madness of History. The intro to the article summarizes it best: Are certain human behaviours timeless, or always part of a greater cultural context? The answer, in some cases, means the difference between pathology and theology. Although the article focuses on anorexia, it also speaks to historical views of mental illness. I really liked it.

Fad Diets: Feeding Food Obsession. There are a few things in this article that I don't like (where anorexia is equated to a need to be "in control." Which is true, in the sense that sufferers are looking for control- but only because they don't have it), but overall it's a good look at how culture and dieting can trigger eating disorders.

Scotland wins approval for first inpatient Eating Disorders Unit. And it's in Aberdeen, where I studied for a semester. And it's also about time.

Mirrors Reflect on Body Image. I don't know one person with an eating disorder who likes looking in the mirror. And even many people without an eating disorder hate what they see. As part of Eating Disorders Awareness Week in Canada, a booth was set up with two mirrors for passers-by to identify something they liked about what they saw. Even if this has no effect on eating disorders, it's still a good message.

The other good stories I already blogged about this week, so happy reading to all.