In terms of removing the stigma, everybody thinks they know what an eating disorder is. I think it's about shifting that perception from the sort of after-school special idea of the eating disorder to the reality of what it is. I think shifting it so that we understand that any of our children can be affected by this, that it is a biological brain disorder, that it is not something children choose, that it is not something families create.... You can't give your child an eating disorder.
I think the notions that exist now lead to the stigma. I think there's a distancing, because people think they understand it and they think it's something that doesn't happen to them or won't happen to them. I think we do have to change that.
On the new evidence that's coming out now, I think the public perception lags behind what we know now about eating disorders. Some of this is about making that trickle down to the general public, what the clinicians know, what the researchers know now, today, in 2013, and having that widely disseminated in a way that reaches the general public.