Picture of Anorexia or Bulimia and Pro Anorexia Websites

Are you looking for a picture or pictures of anorexics? Do you have an interest in Pro Eating Disorders sites?

For over 20 years, we have published and distributed books on eating disorders. My wife Lindsey Hall, and I (Leigh Cohn) wrote Bulimia: A Guide to Recovery, the first publication solely about bulimia. We own Gurze Books and www.bulimia.com.

Over the years, we've had many requests for pictures of people with eating disorders. Typically, they came from students and journalists. Currently, the most common requests come from web surfers looking for online photos of anorexics. However, it has always been our policy to neither publish nor distribute these kinds of photos.

If you personally suffer from an eating disorder, we care about you and want to help you to recover. Seeing photos will not help in any way. Sometimes people get competitive about how thin they are. Comparing yourself to others with anorexia is not productive. Going to Pro Anorexia websites is not healthy. However, we do have books that might help you move toward recovery. Anorexia Nervosa: A Guide to Recovery combines 'the facts' with personal experience and compassion. A few others are listed to the right, and there are many more at this website (home). We also have links to positive organizations and other informational sites.

If however, you are looking for photos that are salacious or sensationalize eating disorders, we oppose this use of them. These photos are demeaning. They stereotype and trivialize both the individual photographed and the scores of unseen sufferers and their families. They are also disrespectful of professional clinicians and researchers who have devoted their lives to helping women and men with anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and other related problems.

Where to Find Photos of Eating Disorders

There are many places to find these kinds of images. Photographs of anorexics and bulimics are in most fashion magazines. In fact, many of the models are dangerously thin because they suffer from eating disorders. You can also look in many junior and senior high school yearbooks for people obsessed with food and weight. That's when these illnesses often take root. You may find snapshots in your family albums, because many bulimics are secretive--even their loved ones are not aware of the disease. People with severe anorexia look like the victims in photos from concentration camps that you've probably seen. Pictures of anorexics are also in the obituaries; anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.

Some of the most searched for terms on the internet include "pro anorexia" and "eating disorder pictures." Maybe that's why you found this page. There is nothing titillating about images of people with these disorders. I've seen pictures in medical books and even show the slide of a male anorexic in some of my clinical talks. There's nothing sexy about these photos. They do not record achievement, only obsessive and potentially deadly behavior.

Students who write papers on eating disorders need to understand the seriousness of these problems. How would you illustrate a paper on schizophrenia or claustrophobia? If you write a paper on alcoholism, do you show photos of people drinking? Are they your loved ones? Individuals with anorexia nervosa and bulimia are your neighbors, families, and friends--people working in the stores where you shop and the school you attend. Please respect them by not showing them.

More info...

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