I Had No Idea...

Hello readers!

Last Sunday, February 22 started this year’s National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The theme, “I Had No Idea,” sounds simple, yet speaks volumes. There are so many unknowns with eating disorders, and so little understanding of them among most of the population. Eating disorders are often overlooked. With this year’s theme, the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) aims to educate people on eating disorders and show everyone that early intervention is important in recovery—that eating disorders are not just a “phase.”

While there may be many “pro-ana” sites and other harmful sites that promote eating disorders as a positive way of life, social media is also being used to raise awareness for eating disorder treatment and prevention. NEDA encourages people to use the hashtag NEDAwareness on social media sites all week long (If you are unfamiliar with how “hashtags” work and you want to learn about them, click here).  Some other popular hashtags for this week are: #NedaWeek, #NedaAwarenessWeek, #NEDAWeek2015. There are thousands of postings with these hashtags on Instagram alone.

Even if you do not have a Twitter account, you can see some of the “tweets” about eating disorder awareness by clicking here. It’s so nice to see social media put to good use for positive change.

People don’t need to have any personal experience with eating disorders to bring attention to this important cause. Below are some images from the NEDA Website that NEDA encourages social media users to share on their pages.

Thanks for Reading!

Carly 

Through with Week Two

Hello again!

I cannot believe the second week of my internship is already over!

This week, I was more involved with the administrative aspects of the clinic. Since I hope to become a doctor and open my own practice someday, I’m especially glad I got this experience.

I spent most of my time this week at the front desk of the office. I put my phone skills to the test and answered all the incoming calls. While many of the callers were regular clients who wanted to leave confidential voicemails for their providers or confirm an appointment time, sometimes a new client would call to ask questions. One question I had for the new clients though was “how did you hear about A New Beginning?” Do the specialists get clients from referrals from other doctors? Other clients? The ANB website? Perhaps any or all of the above. But outreach is also important. For National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which starts tomorrow, I helped with ANB’s letter to different high schools and middle schools in the area about ANB’s services and treatment for people with eating disorders. Because of the growing number of eating disorder occurrences in youth, it seems important that schools get this information. Also for NED Awareness week, A New Beginning will have a booth at the NEDA walk at the Phoenix Zoo on March 1^st. If you are interested, check out the site for the walk here.

I hope to continue researching social media’s impact on eating disorders next week and will provide any updates on that research in my next post…

Thanks for reading!

Carly 

Week One Fun

Hello Everyone,

I finished my first week at A New Beginning! I can already tell I’m going to have a great time in my internship. 

On the first day, I got to meet all the staff at ANB. All the ANB team members were incredibly kind and welcoming, and they even allowed me to sit in on part of their staff meeting during lunch. I spent most of the day scoring client self-assessments. The assessments were standard evaluations that many psychologists use to determine where a client falls on the spectrum of anxiety, depression, body image concern, binge eating behaviors, etc. I was not sure how to score the assessments at first, but the scoring key to go with the assessments shows how to reach a total score based on the response to each question. For example, if the question said, “I feel calm…” one would possibly circle the option that says “a little of the time,” and that would add four points to the total score on an anxiety test. The total score tells what degree of anxiety one has, based on the range it falls into. This task took me a significant amount of time because I double or triple-checked all the numbers to make sure I scored everything correctly.

The next day, I spent most of my time searching different social media sites for material pertaining to anorexia. I was shocked by how many blogs I found promoted anorexia, commonly termed “pro-ana” sites. I spent hours looking through various webpages, and I barely even scratched the surface in my research. There is so much out there!

On my third day, I scored more self-evaluation sheets and continued my research. Also, the office manager, Jessica, showed me how to answer the calls and direct them to the appropriate voicemails of the different providers.

I look forward to the weeks ahead and working with the wonderful ANB team!

-Carly