NEDA Awareness Week 2012 Highlights

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2012 was a huge success! The masses partnered together to bring eating disorder awareness to all parts of the globe! Awareness was done via organizing walks, speaking engagements, workshops, writing articles, celebrity tweeting and even making street art. Check out some of the weeks high-lights!

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is a week when everyone in the eating disorder recovery community partners up to spread awareness. This year, an overwhelming about of awareness was spread by activists, those in recovery and even celebrity’s! Demi Lovatto, singer, actress and former Disney star who is in recovery for her eating disorder sent out the following tweets on Twitter last week to her 6 million followers:

“24 million Americans are affected by eating disorders. Everybody Knows Somebody. #NEDAwareness.”

“Most models are thinner than 98% of Americans. Instead of trying to change our bodies, how about we try to change our culture? #NEDAwareness”

And

“Research funding per individual: Alzheimer’s $88, Schizophrenia $81, Autism $44. Eating disorders? $0.93. Insufficient. #NEDAwareness.”

Along the same Social Media bandwagon many bloggers took the time to spread awareness
via posts on their blogs. One very popular Mommy Blog, Rage Against the Minivan posted an article about Preventing Eating Disorders in Children. As well as various posts by Pyschology Today and Psych Central.

Everyone’s favorite eating disorder prevention non-profit Rewrite Beautiful  held a School Program with the Costa Mesa High School Cheerleaders and Ensigh Jr. High School. The students heard an eating disorder recovery story, the physical trauma of eating disorders, participated in a Q&A panel and the opportunity to Rewrite Beautiful about themselves.

Across the country people organized NEDA Walks. Walks were held across the country, from Portland, Oregon to New York, New York.  At the walks different college sorority’s, community groups and activists pledged money and walked for eating disorder research
and treatment.

Did you also hear that the Empire State building was lit up one night in honor of NEDAwareness Week?

The award for the edgiest of all awareness strategies goes to Rewrite Beautiful for creating street art to bring awareness to eating disorders. The non-profit group held a Street Art Workshop on Sunday with their supporters. They took old CD’s and CD cases and spray painted them. They assembled them to spell Rewrite Beautiful, spray painted them and then asked the participants to write what makes them Creative, Kind and Strong on the CD’s.
The street art was placed in front of Newport Harbor High School with sharpie markers for other participants to also find their own beauty; creativity, kindness and strength.

If you missed out on NEDA Week, don’t worry! You can still spread the word! Awareness is always needed. If you read an interesting article about eating disorders or hear about prevention, share it with your twitter followers and facebook friends. People always need to be educated. The more awareness the more lives that will be saved from the horrific disease.