There is widespread fear among the general public that if a member of the family is diagnosed with a mental illness they will encounter overt discriminatory attitudes or stigmatizing attitudes. I prefer the word “discrimination” to “stigma” because I think this is discrimination, and you can do something about discrimination. Stigma is much harder to deal with, but discriminatory attitudes can be changed by policy, for example.
People are afraid to come forward because they don't want to be identified as having a mentally ill family member. That's true for eating disorders, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disease, anything. I used to be president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and then chairman of the board for many years. I've testified at many of these panels before. I'm very close to pressing my mental health advocacy button, but I'll resist the temptation to press it.
For the individual, these are shameful illnesses, by and large. Again, this is more of a problem with bulimia than anorexia. Most families will notice if somebody's anorexic because of the weight loss and the amenorrhea, but bulimia is quiet and patients with bulimia are ashamed. They don't like it. They're not proud of it. It's not socially acceptable to be bingeing and vomiting, so they don't say anything until maybe they have a bit of a bleed when they vomit and they get terrified and say something, or maybe their dentists say something.
I give lectures to dental students about this, because they're often the front-line practitioners who identify this. But bulimia is invisible. It can go on forever until someone just drops dead from an electrolyte disturbance.