BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- Each month, “WBZ Cares” highlights a worthy non-profit organization and tells the story of what that organization does for the community. This month WBZ is profiling MEDA (Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association) in Newton which works to prevent the continuing spread of eating disorders through education and early detection.
This is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week and MEDA Executive Director Leslie Bernstein says there are several local events.
“Ranging from a Yoga class that will focus on body love, there will be a screening of a movie, there will be a book author who’s just released a novel about a person suffering with an eating disorder”, Bernstein explained.
MEDA also hosts a professional conference in April to help raise awareness of the eating disorder issue.
“It’s very clinically oriented so it’s not for families or people suffering with eating disorders but about those who help them and help with their recovery, help with treatment, help with all different kinds of ways of thinking about it. It’s the latest and greatest information on eating disorders”, stated Bernstein.
This woman from Connecticut went to MEDA for treatment as a teenager and says recovery is a lifelong process.
“MEDA really put me in touch with just a great provider who was very well versed in eating disorders work and it’s a huge network of providers in the Boston area and so many of them are connected professionally to MEDA. It’s an amazing resource”, the Connecticut woman commented.
And MEDA Founder Becky Manley says the organization started small, but has really grown.
“We help thousands of individuals a year. Not just in the state of Massachusetts because we get calls from all over the United States. I get emails from people internationally all the time. I just get asked all the time, ‘Would you just tell your story to my daughter’, ‘Would you tell your story to my son’, ‘Would you let them know that they can get better like you got better’, Manley said.
WBZ NewsRadio1030's Doug Cope Reports