FAMS 1500 9 Body Image Podcast

Adolescents' poor body image is influenced by social media and can lead to unhealthy behaviors and mental health issues. Changes in their bodies during adolescence can cause discomfort and the pressure to compare themselves to others exacerbates this. Eating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder, can result from dissatisfaction with body image. These disorders have physical and mental effects, and parents should create an open and loving space for their children. Therapy and treatment facilities may be necessary for severe cases. Parents must prioritize their child's well-being, even if it means setting limits on social media use. Hello, today I'm going to be doing a podcast on body image and mental health in adolescents. So to start off, we're going to discuss body image. What body image is? The body image is a person's idea of how their personal body looks. And among adolescents, particularly teenagers, one reason for really poor nutrition and health is that they are worried about how their body looks. This is heavily influenced by the use of social media, comparing themselves to others, trying to imagine what they would look like if they had that body, or maybe what they would like to change about themselves. And it becomes this competition in their mind, and it puts them in a really bad place mentally. It can cause them to treat their bodies poorly, and things like that. So we're going to discuss a little more about that. As we know, in adolescence, your body changes rapidly, there's all these new experiences, you gain weight, for girls you get breasts, and you get hips, and you start to break out, and that's uncomfortable. For boys, sometimes your voice starts cracking, and that's embarrassing, and you grow hair, and you also have acne, and you just feel uncomfortable in your body. And then comparing yourselves to the other people that you see on social media is not a helpful practice, especially for impressionable young teenagers. So, dissatisfaction with bodies, and how we look, and how we feel about how we look, especially in adolescence, can lead to eating disorders. It can be even deadly for some if they go too far with their eating disorder. And eating disorders for boys and girls typically look a little different. For girls, they eat erratically, or at points they're eating too much, at points they're eating too little, starving themselves. They may even try things like diet pills in order to lose weight. When it comes to boys, they're worried about gaining muscle, and being strong, and being manly, and being big, and looking like a man. So they might take harmful drugs like steroids, or protein powders too much, and just ingesting things that are not good for their bodies at a rate that's not good for their bodies. And this increases dramatically as children go from childhood to teenagerhood. There are a couple different kinds of eating disorders that children can experience, or adolescents can experience, and they're not particular to just one specific gender. There are three different ones, there's anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. So anorexia is an eating disorder characterized by self-starvation, where people voluntarily starve themselves, and they often will exercise, which is severely harmful for their body for a number of reasons. They're not getting the nutrition that their body needs, especially in this crucial time period of development, and they're starving themselves. They're not eating this often, not often, but can lead to death if left untreated and left unhelped. Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder where people will binge eat, and then they'll purge often, throwing up. Or they will use laxatives to try and get the food out of their body sooner and quicker. This is also bad for your body because you're eating too much, and often it's food that is not healthy for you, not good for your body, it doesn't have the nutrients you need. So you're eating too much, and you're eating food that is most likely not very healthy for your body, and then you're depriving it of any kind of nutrients that were in that food by getting it out of your body as quickly as possible. So again, not getting the nutrients they need as young adolescents for their growing and developing bodies. And then binge eating disorder is frequent episodes where you overeat to the point where your stomach physically hurts. And it's often coming with a lot of shame and guilt, but it's an urge that can't stop. And this is unhealthy because you're eating too much, again, probably food that is not very good for your body, too quickly. Your body can't process it, it can't take the things it needs, and this is unhealthy because your body will start to hold on to fats that it doesn't need, and just all these things that are not good for it. These eating disorders are characterized in the DSM-5, so they are considered mental health disorders, but they do have a very physical effect. And the comparison that these teenagers do heavily can influence their ability to develop an eating disorder. So what do you do as a parent if you have a child who has poor mental health, who has an eating disorder, who is not getting the nutrients their body needs, who is not treating their body in the way it needs to be treated? What do you do? Especially because teenagers can be so proud and stubborn, and often they feel a sense of shame and guilt and embarrassment for these behaviors, and they don't want anyone to know about it. They don't want it to be seen, they want it to be ignored. So as a parent, something that is really important is you make sure you create an open and loving space. You make sure you build that connection with your child, that way when they do reach adolescence, they know that you are a reliable person for them to turn to, they know you are a safe person to turn to, and they know they can trust you. This does not mean being their friend, that's an important clarification. You are still their parent, you are still their caregiver, it is still your responsibility to discipline them and provide them the structure they need. And sometimes this looks like doing things that they don't like by limiting their use of social media. If you see them comparing themselves too much and see harmful behaviors occurring from the use of social media, this, if your child has an eating disorder that is out of hand, may include intense therapy, sometimes even treatment facilities for your child to help limit the harm that they're doing to their bodies. Because times like these can be extremely critical and tense, it is really important to let your child know you love them and you are doing your job as their parent and caregiver to provide them with the care that they need, even if it is not the care that they want. Which can be difficult sometimes, especially with teenagers. But the highest recommendation is to make sure you're paying attention, that you are loving them, that you are caring for them, and that you are doing what you can to protect them in these situations, because they can be very, very harmful and can have lifelong lasting impacts on their bodies and their mental health and just the rest of their lives if these mental health disorders or eating disorders are left unchecked. So thank you so much.