Status of Women Committee on March 3rd, 2014

[Patricia Lemoine]

I think I did not have such a great experience with the medical community. Most of the doctors that I saw throughout the years didn't have such good bedside manner in terms of talking about a woman's body. I think that for me would be fundamental, because if you go to get help and you speak to someone, you would think that a medical professional would actually be nice and compassionate about this, but then you find yourself in a dialogue that is actually very negative that surrounds dieting and what you should do and negative body talk. I think that might prevent you from actually speaking and getting more help. I would really encourage more—I don't know if it would be training, because I think a lot of it is maybe the personality trait of not being sensitive. I think maybe someone could learn to be sensitive, so I would really focus on the medical community.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

You're saying focus on the medical communities, how they express...and deal with the patient.

[Patricia Lemoine]

I think that's a big need, yes.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

They too need to learn a lot more about it. When you look at eating disorders, it's not just not the ordinary person, it's all of us who really need to tune in a little more than what we have.

My next question is for Elaine Stevenson. First of all, I want to say I look forward to seeing the recommendations you have sent, because you certainly have had a lot of experience to pass on to all of us. And though the day doesn't allow the time, we look forward to seeing what you have to offer us in suggestions for our recommendations.

With your particular experience, could you tell us about resources that exist to help a family who is suffering from this in terms of support for victims of eating disorders?

I'll go with that question first. What are some of the experiences out there?

[Elaine Stevenson]

First of all, one of the most, I think, incredibly wonderful resources is offered by the National Eating Disorder Information Centre. Merryl Bear, the executive director, was one of the presenters before your committee. As a family member I travelled years and years ago to NEDIC in Ontario to, quite bluntly, ask Merryl if she could help me save my daughter's life.

A lot of eating disorder programs will concurrently run support programs for families of children who have eating disorders and are in treatment. And that's the real problem. It's okay for the families to go to those support programs because they have a child in treatment in one of the tertiary care hospitals or community-based eating disorder programs. But often there's a caveat, and unless you have a child in treatment, you can't go there for family support. So for seven years I was vice-president of the Eating Disorders Association of Manitoba. We helped with others to organize a support group for families, because there was an urgent and desperate need for it, and that urgent and desperate need exists consistently across our country.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you.

My next question is for Valerie Steeves.

I noticed that you said girls are under much pressure to have a certain look, and we certainly see that every day, especially in the media, as you said. The environment has changed and has caused a lot of pressure on girls. In academia, do you know if there is any research or a community of experts who study eating disorders to give that extra help that's needed?

[Dr. Valerie Steeves]

The literature that I'm familiar with is more within the communications and sociological disciplines, and it focuses more on body image. But there is quite a bit of work that's been done on body image, both within the community as a whole and in online media and other forms of media. I'd be happy to provide some references to that literature if that would support the committee's work.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I was mentioning this to another bunch of witnesses the other day, that after having a study ongoing here on our committee, I noticed that in a new catalogue that came out there were some bathing suits on people who were not really skinny; they were wearing them and showing off these bathing suits. So I thought, well, maybe we are...some people out there must be listening and hearing how bad it really is.

[Dr. Valerie Steeves]

Yes. There are best practices. Dove actually has taken the lead as a corporate player and has come up with some really interesting advertising.

A magazine in Australia tried to implement that with regular-sized bodies, and their advertisers all pulled and they had to pull the magazine. Women loved it, girls loved it, it got tons of positive feedback, but the advertisers pulled their support from the magazine, so they went back to the regular ones.

But there are best practices, I agree, and we should identify them and encourage them.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Yes. It's tough out there for the girls.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

You have 15 seconds.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I was just going to ask...well, forget it, I guess. My 15 seconds are done. That's okay.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much for your understanding.

Ms. St-Denis, you have seven minutes.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I will come back on something my colleague said about what measures the federal government could take. We know that some parts of health care fall under provincial jurisdiction and that the federal government cannot infringe on provincial jurisdiction.

Did you think about what you could ask the federal government to do so that the situations which have been described can be improved? For example, Ms. Steeves, you talked about the media. Communications could fall under federal jurisdiction. Do you have any specific requests of the federal government, as this is an area under federal jurisdiction?

[Dr. Valerie Steeves]

The Competition Bureau is beginning a preliminary examination of behavioural targeting and of the marketing model that drives a lot of this kind of advertising. They've been looking at children's privacy and the impact on children. As an unfair trade practice, there is space there to examine it.

In addition, I think it might be worthwhile to think about some kind of regulatory framework or legislation that might set some standards for body images in advertising. I think that would be amazing, because you're right; when we look at the Dove ads and we see regular girls or regular women up there, it's like “Whoa!”

If we could change the visual environment that children live in, it might actually have an impact. I would suggest you consider that as a possibility as well.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you.

I would like to come back to what Ms. Beattie said. I am asking the question because it is very important that the matter be included in the report. We have to take this into account.

You said that it is important for us to recognize that eating disorders are mental health problems. That is not sufficiently recognized.

Have you ever thought of proposing programs about that? In fact, mental health is an important issue here. The federal government has created some specific programs to address that type of issue. Have you thought about that?

Ms. Stevenson, do you think that this idea could hold some promise?

[Elaine Stevenson]

I thought the question was for Laura. It was for me?

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Do you think that we could ask the government to create this type of program?

[Elaine Stevenson]

Yes. I think we need to provide programming that educates the general public, doctors, physicians, and any clinicians dealing with the treatment of eating disorders and mental health on these illnesses. I am amazed and sometimes extremely frustrated by the number of people who you'd think would know more about eating disorders and actually don't.

I was at a health conference a few years back, and a doctor came back to look at our display on eating disorders. He told me that boys didn't have eating disorders. I looked at him and said, “Of course they do”, but he absolutely insisted that it was only a female illness, that boys did not have it. So we really need to take a look at education.

You had a previous question on what the federal government can do. They can legislate with regard to the harmful media advertising to young children that is totally unacceptable. They should go after the diet industry. You see these full-page ads saying, “Boy, if you diet like this, you'll be smarter and richer.”

By the way, this full-page article that was printed in the Winnipeg Free Press was written by a diet company. You will find nowhere on this page that it was written by a diet company.

We need to take a serious look at the diet industry. We as individuals, parents, support groups, and clinicians need to be working closely with the media on how we can reduce harmful advertising and how we can enrich programming to those people who urgently need it, including their families.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Ms. Beattie, what, in your opinion, lies at the root of eating disorders?

[Laura Beattie]

We don't know what the causes are. I think we can't have primary prevention until we know. There's genetic vulnerability, the environment, a whole host of things that interact and from all my reading we don't know exactly what causes them. I know research is going on in other countries. It's called the Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative, ANGI, study—Canada is not part of it—to see the genetic components so we can come up with treatments.

When I think about cause I think we need to tease out body image and eating disorders awareness from the actual mental illness of eating disorders. Because when we talk about awareness of eating disorders, we seem to focus on body image; you don't see that in children a lot. You won't see the same type of body image issues or the symptoms and behaviours of a teenage girl or a young woman that you would in a man. They may express it differently. When these people have eating disorders, these young girls and women, they're expressing how fat they are or they hate the way they look. Those are symptoms, and they're behaviours. They're not causes of eating disorders.

I think there is a lot of new neuroscientific research, and they're starting to tease out that we need to focus upstream on our research and not just look at the behaviours and the symptoms, because those aren't the causes. We need to look backwards and find out exactly what is causing them, because right now we don't know. We know there's a whole host of things at play, but in children they look different than in young adults, in young women and in young men, they all look different.

Yes, the environment does play a role, I agree, but there's so much more than just the environment.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Beattie.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Crockatt for five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much and I want to add my thanks to all our witnesses today. I think this has been emotional as well as eye-opening.

Elaine Stevenson, first of all, I feel your frustration at probably having been one of the first in this group to go through all this and I admire your tenacity. I imagine you're doing this in remembrance of your daughter and I admire you for that, so thank you.

I also wanted to say to Patricia and to Laura that I think we should take these testimonies that we've heard from the three of you directly—Valerie, yours is fascinating too, but I'm just talking about the first person—and print them verbatim and put them up on websites so people can see what a real person affected by these disorders goes through, because I think that has been the most eye-opening to me. It's very interesting to hear the medical people who've studied it, but these are young girls and it's you who are going to get through to them.

I was particularly struck too, Patricia, hearing you talk about how part of your recovery has been the work that you do, role modelling and counselling. I'm wondering if that is maybe a very important best practice that we've heard here today. Can you talk about that?

[Patricia Lemoine]

I think it's really important for men and women to see that you can recover and what the recovery looks like. I will often write on the blog and I also do video blogs and I talk about the fact that I'm a normal person. I'm an average girl. I grew up in an average family and had an average upbringing. Very often with eating disorders, it's said to be a white girl's problem and whenever I hear that I think, my God, we have so much to do, because it doesn't discriminate and anyone can be affected by it and everyone—

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Can I take it in a bit of a different direction? My time's short, sorry.

I'm wondering about the part of this that is helping you stay cured, which is the modelling. What I'm thinking we've heard is about sexual abuse and I want to ask a question about that, but also that there's a pursuit of perfection here. You managed to get yourself turned around. You're obviously a strong-willed individual. Probably most of these people, boys and girls who are affected, are strong willed. I'm wondering if part of self-actualizing and staying cured that we've heard—it's just a theory and you can tell me if you agree or not—but is your helping others turning that into an empowerment? So more on your personal recovery, is that a best practice we should include in our report?