EDIT Collaboration: Curiosity Instead of Gaslighting

Another milestone came this week for the EDIT Collaboration. We published our protocol for a systematic review of behavioral weight management with a meta analysis of the risk factors for disordered eating behaviors in individual participants. Yes, that’s a mouthful. But the point of the EDIT Collaboration is to muster some serious curiosity about the risk for disordered eating in people seeking behavioral help with weight management.

This is totally preferable to the gaslighting we hear from people who want to coerce followers into believing there is only one right way to think about eating disorders or obesity. So ConscienHealth is pleased to be a part of this global collaboration. We have considerable admiration for Hiba Jebeile and the team at the University of Sydney that is leading this ambitious effort.

Multiple Concerns, Sometimes Overlapping

It might be nice if folks who concern themselves with eating disorders or with obesity could live peacefully in their own little silos, focused only on one or the other domain.

We even hear from some people who prefer to believe that nothing but the concerns in their domain really matter. But the truth is that both eating disorders and obesity present complex clinical concerns and they sometimes overlap. This is especially true for binge eating behavior and obesity.

Telling people who have concerns with obesity that their health concerns are not valid is really just a self-righteous form of medical gaslighting. Likewise, telling everyone with a higher body weight that the answer to all their problems is to lose weight is psychologically abusive.

Real Curiosity About the Overlap

The EDIT Collaboration is quite impressive because of the curiosity it brings to the subject of this overlap. The authors of this new protocol explain:

“The Eating Disorders In weight-related Therapy (EDIT) Collaboration will, for the first time, explore the complex risk factor interactions that may precede changes in eating disorder risk during and following weight management.”

Whatever the outcome, it will be a win for scientific curiosity and collaboration.

Click here for the new publication in PLOS One and here to learn more about the collaboration.

Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, public domain image from the 1944 movie trailer / Wikimedia Commons

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July 12, 2023