Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia Websites

I enjoy reading blogs.  I read blogs on cooking, healthy living, do-it-yourself, decorating,gardening, and a lot of other things.  I am on Pinterest.  I have 18 different boards on Pinterest and nearly 200 pins covering several broad topics.  Never have I come across a Pro-Ana or Pro-Mia website.  Until this past week… 

I have done a fair amount of research on the web regarding eating disorders and ethics.  I have read discussions about sites that promote the anorexic and bulimic lifestyles.  This week I decided to d a search and looked them up.  I was shocked by the ease of finding the sites.  Just typing pro-ana came up with hundreds of websites. 

When I first started viewing some of these sites, I was horrified and disgusted.  I found them everywhere.  Blogs, Youtube, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere.  There seemed to be more fro the UK, than other countries.  The websites themselves gave warnings about the dangers and that they could not be held responsible for other’s actions.  Clearly the authors of these blogs knew the dangers of promoting the lifestyle.  These websites contain helpful hints on staying true to the lifestyle, how to hide your weight loss or how to hide your lack of eating.  There are list of low/no calorie foods.  There are forums that people can post questions and victories.  Pictures of super-thin models and quotes about being thin abound on these sites.  “Thinspiration” is what these pictures are called.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you find people.  Real people.  These girls(I did not find any posts by boys or men), were true to themselves and each other.  They had found a place where they were accepted.  Their thinking is clearly flawed, but they felt safe to talk about their struggles.  There was a lot of poetry. Many dreamed about recovery.  

I began to think of the good that might come from these sites.  Asking a client to “friend” them on their social media, could give a therapist a wealth of information.  Family and friends of people with eating disorders would benefit going onto these websites and getting to know about how eating disorders affects one’s thinking. Psychologist can use these websites for research. We can reach out to them, lovingly and encourage recovery.  Rather than condemn one of the few outlets that these girls have, let’s use it to our advantage and learn all we can from them.  

References

Davis, J. (2008). Pro-anorexia sites--A patient's perspective. Child And Adolescent Mental Health, 13(2), 97. doi:10.1111/j.1475-3588.2008.00489_3.x

Fox, N., Ward, K., & O'Rourke, A. (2005). Pro-anorexia, weight-loss drugs and the internet: an ‘anti-recovery’ explanatory model of anorexia. Sociology Of Health & Illness, 27(7), 944-971. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00465.x