During National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, a lot of attention is paid toward the portrayal of the female body image and the nearly 10 million women who suffer from a life threatening eating disorder.
What is not focused on is the statistic that more than one million men in this country are fighting the same battle, many with little to no knowledge of how to get help.
"Many people still believe that eating disorders only affect females, so they may not be looking for eating disorder symptoms in males," said Jenna Silverman, senior staff clinician at the Auburn University Student Counseling Services.
"There tends to be greater stigma for men to talk about having any kind of mental health struggles, let alone concerns about their body image."
Because of this, Silverman said that men are much less likely to recognize or seek out help for an eating disorder from friends, family or mental health professionals.
Annette Kluck, assistant professor, said there are many factors leading to there being less awareness about men's eating disorders.
"The diagnostic criteria for anorexia originally included, and still does, the loss of a menstrual cycle for menstruating women," Kluck said. "Just from a diagnostic standpoint, the focus is on women."
In addition, Kluck said one factor leading to anorexia diagnosis was being underweight, which is not so in cases of the disorder in men.
"The ideal body type for women tends to emphasize thinness, while for men it is muscular size," Kluck said. "For women with anorexia, they are going to be noticeably underweight, which may not be true for men. It is always harder to identify people with a problem when they appear to have a normal weight."
Symptoms of men's eating disorders, Silverman said, include over exercising, limiting food intake, avoidance of entire food groups like carbohydrates and extreme insecurity about or focus on the body.
Men are also more likely than women to abuse or misuse nutritional supplements or other muscle-building substances, such as the supplement creatine. Silverman said she believes this is because men are under similar pressure as women to appear a certain way. "Men may feel more isolated and ashamed in their struggles with body image concerns," Silverman said. "At times, this pressure can be even more difficult since men may be less likely to talk with other men about how they feel about their bodies or how these feelings affect their self-esteem. Hopefully, as awareness increases about eating disorders and negative body image among men, more men will feel comfortable talking about their concerns and seeking help."
This is beginning to improve in recent years, however, as more men begin to report eating disorder symptoms.
"This increase might be due to greater recognition of symptoms in men and more pressure from the media for men to look as certain way, such as have 'sixpack' abs," Silverman said.
For male students who think they or someone they know may have an eating disorder, Silverman said individual and group therapy decrease eating disorder symptoms and improve body image.
"Student Counseling Services eating disorder treatments are also available for men, including evaluation by physicians at the Medical Clinic and a consultation with a dietician," Silverman said.
If men are concerned about possibly having eating disorder symptoms, Silverman said, they can contact the counseling services to set up an initial visit with a mental health clinician.
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