👾 Small guideline change (medication and eating disorders)

JustV

I don't know why I chose that emoji for the title, I just think it's cute 👾

We've made a small change to the Community Guidelines around medication and eating disorders:

Community Guidelines wrote:

Eating behaviours
When discussing eating behaviours, it’s okay to say you overeat or restrict, or to share a formal diagnosis. It’s also okay to talk about laxative misuse in relation to disordered eating. Please avoid discussing specific details, such as:

• How much or what you've consumed
• Calories and nutritional info
• Body measurements
• + Detailed accounts of exercise
  
• + Methods of purging
  
• + Methods of reducing appetite
  

Substances
If you would like to discuss drugs or medication, please avoid sharing dosages. This is to make sure people don’t self-medicate based on advice from the community.

The mod team felt that allowing discussion of laxative use in relation to eating disorders wasn't consistent with our overall approach of not discussing eating behaviours, so that is no longer permitted.

We've also added methods of purging to the list - which we're kind of surprised wasn't there before 🤨

Detailed accounts of exercise is now disallowed, because of how that can relate to eating disorders and body image issues generally.

Methods of reducing appetite has been included as a separate point, after the mod team decided it wasn't obviously covered under methods of purging.

And finally, we trimmed down the wording a little bit to make it more concise.

When it comes to medication, it's okay to say names of medication to discuss side-effects and different experiences taking them. Dosages can't be shared to avoid people self-medicating based on posts.

There's a bit of crossover here with medication and EDs. Please do not share names of medications used to purge or lose weight - this will be classed as a method of purging and therefore not permitted.

--
I hope that makes things clearer and more consistent for everyone. Drop any questions below and someone on the mod team will get back to you as soon as possible. 🙂

independent_

At the top there it says it's still ok to discuss laxatives? I don't really understand that as it's still a method surely?

ETA: please ignore!!! Stupid screen reader (delete if possible cuz now i look like an eejit) !!

River

@independent_ it's crossed out at the top

independent_

River wrote: »

@independent_ it's crossed out at the top

Ffs i feel like a complete dafty now @River 🤣🤣 the screen reader not behaving as ever

River

@independent_ it's okay I thought that may have been the cause but if it helps I thought the staff just liked putting a line through it 🤣

JustV

Apologies @independent_! Me trying to be clever with the formatting 🤦

I've hopefully made it clear in the main post now that laxative discussion is no longer allowed.

@independent_ happy to still delete your comments if you like, but this was quite helpful so didn't want to remove them now without double checking!

JustV

One small addition to this:

JustV wrote:

Methods of reducing appetite has been included as a separate point, after the mod team decided it wasn't obviously covered under methods of purging.

Main post has been updated

Siena

Was this update because of what I’ve been sharing:/ sorry. But atleast kinda helpful going forward

Chloe234

JustV wrote: »

One small addition to this:

JustV wrote:

Methods of reducing appetite has been included as a separate point, after the mod team decided it wasn't obviously covered under methods of purging.

Main post has been updated

By "methods of reducing appetite" is this including saying your appetite isn't great atm or you don't have much of an appetite recently? Just asking bc ik many things can link to this eg grief ect So wondered if that's okay or if it's just not at all?

JustV

Siena wrote: »

Was this update because of what I’ve been sharing:/ sorry. But atleast kinda helpful going forward

You're all good @Siena - the update was added more to make our existing approach clearer for people. Your posts highlighted that gap for us which was actually really helpful.

Chloe234 wrote: »

JustV wrote: »

One small addition to this:

JustV wrote:

Methods of reducing appetite has been included as a separate point, after the mod team decided it wasn't obviously covered under methods of purging.

Main post has been updated

By "methods of reducing appetite" is this including saying your appetite isn't great atm or you don't have much of an appetite recently? Just asking bc ik many things can link to this eg grief ect So wondered if that's okay or if it's just not at all?

Nah that's fine @Chloe234. It's totally okay to say your appetite is lower for any reason (that happens to us all sometimes). This guideline is for people talking about how to deliberately reduce their appetite in the context of disordered eating. It's a bit of a niche one that doesn't come up often but we wanted to make sure it was clearly covered in the guidelines.