Manorexia – the new word for men with eating disorders!!

An article by Catherine Pearson in the Huffington Post talks about a guy called  Matt Wetsel, 26, who took more than a month to work up the courage to try group therapy for anorexia, the eating disorder he says consumed two years of his life. A college student at the time, Matt said he would plan to attend a meeting, become overwhelmed and would shy away.

When Wetsel finally steeled himself enough to attend, a woman stopped him and asked if he needed help. Unable to explain himself, he handed her a flier promoting the group. The woman disappeared, returning a few minutes later with the news that he could not take part. The group, it seemed, was for women only.

“I have never felt so defeated,” Wetsel said in a speech on Capitol Hill last spring.

Eating disorders have long been believed to be a female issue. The National Institute of Health estimates that girls are two-and-a-half times more likely to have an eating disorder than boys, while groups like the nonprofit National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders state that women are “much more likely than men to develop an eating disorder.” Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that such numbers and statements may not truly reflect the large number of boys and men with eating disorders — be it anorexia, bulimia, binge eating or the broader category of “eating disorders not otherwise specified.”

Earlier this month, the BBC reported that hospital admissions for men with eating disorders increased by 66 percent in the last decade in the U.K. In the U.S., a recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that binge eating and bulimia were indeed more prevalent among adolescent girls than boys, but that the prevalence of anorexia nervosa was exactly the same.

“The one million dollar question is what this means,” said Daniel Le Grange, Ph.D, director of the eating disorders program at The University of Chicago and an author of that study.

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