Do you think people are properly educated about eating disorders?

You know, I don't think it's -just- about being educated about the disorder. There are people who have all the knowledge in the world yet choose to act in spite of it (Goodness my mind floods with real life examples). Instead, there's a certain... what's the word... finesse (?) that is necessary to properly handle someone with an eating disorder or any other situation in general. Education helps, and growing up helps even more. But there are countless examples of people who are educated and mature but still presumptuous. So in the end maybe it's just a personality thing. For a few it's a case of misplaced tough-love, so you can't lay the entire blame on those folk.

I'll confess I don't know squat about eating disorders except for a few names and what they entail. Yet I know better than to tell someone to just get over it.

The majority of oeopke I've talked to, especially back when I was dealing with my EDs, don't understand at all. It is alienating, sad, and frustrating. I've had people who never had EDs, have the never to act like experts on the subject.

Telling me that I wasn't born that way, that I needed to love the way God made me, etc. It was that or getting threats that I would be forced into a hospital, or being forced to eat/monitored when eating, being berated and called names, etc. It's horrible. People think that they are helping, when in fact they and their methods are causing more harm.

Again, these same people cause harm when they accuse people, who are naturally thin (myself included), of having eating disorders, telling them that they need to gain weight, poking fun at them to make them gain weight, loudly stating these facts in fronts of others to shame and embarrass them, asking them if they eat, etc. Again, horrible.

Not only does there need to be more education on eating disorders, there also needs to be education on body types and matabolism, etc.

Eating disorders are seen as a form of an anxiety disorder or possibly OCD. No, most people are not properly educated about mental disorders but I can't expect them to be. There's a lot in this world to be educated about, expecting someone to be educated about something just because a small minority of people suffer from it is a bit unreasonable.

I see it more reasonable to say "don't talk about something you don't know about" than to say "educate yourself in my particular disorder and/or a group of particular disorders" in the hopes that education will somehow make them more sympathetic. There are doctors out there who are more educated than us common folks who are unsympathetic to these things. On the flip side, there are individuals who know nothing about it who ARE sympathetic. The best thing we as a society could do is to not be assholes.

We like to make the mistake of believing that, because we are well educated in regards to the issues surrounding or affecting us, that we are well educated. Get into an "ignorant" person's world and bet money you'll see you're not as informed as you thought you were...

I worked as a nutritionist for a couple of years and I will tell you right now that the majority of the public old or young have no concept of what constitutes as a healthy diet. Calorie counting/restricting is a load of horse bollocks which is not a good way of losing body fat.

People aren't educated about eating disorders at all, I'm past getting frustrated over it as a chronic bulimic/anorexic. Explaining your illness to people who don't understand it is exhausting and they see it as you're "doing it to yourself" as if you are in control. I suppose it's one of those things were someone will never fully understand it unless they experience it themselves like depression or anxiety.