Useful information here on the Mind website for those in need of support and advice.
Archive for April, 2008
Mind – Aftercare under Section 117 of the Mental Health Act.
April 17, 2008CONCUR 7
April 17, 2008CONCUR 7 now uploaded as promised. A problem with the photos but that will be resolved – I hope!
All done now and photos are working.
French Bill Takes Chic Out of Being Too Thin
April 16, 2008PARIS — In the capital of high fashion and ultrathin models, conservative French legislators adopted a pioneering law on Tuesday aimed at stifling a proliferation of Web sites that promote eating disorders with “thinspiration” and starvation tips.
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Reuters
The death in 2006 of the Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston from anorexia caused soul-searching in France.
The bill, approved by the lower house of Parliament, faces a Senate vote. If passed, it would take aim at any means of mass communication — including magazines and Web sites — that promote eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia with punishments of up to three years in prison and more than $70,000 in fines.
The legislation was sponsored by Valérie Boyer, a conservative lawmaker from the Bouches-du-Rhône region in the south of France, and was also backed by the government’s health minister, Roselyne Bachelot. It is one of the strongest measures proposed since the 2006 death of a Brazilian model, Ana Carolina Reston, from anorexia.
“We have noticed,” Ms. Boyer said in an interview with The Associated Press, “that the sociocultural and media environment seems to favor the emergence of troubled nutritional behavior, and that is why I think it necessary to act.”
But the proposed law was criticized by the French Federation of Couture. Didier Grumbach, the federation president, told The Associated Press that it was impossible to legislate body weight. “Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny,” he said. “That doesn’t exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”
With the proposed law, the French legislators are seeking to tame a murky world of some 400 sites extolling “ana” and “mia,” nicknames for anorexia and bulimia. Since 2000, such Web sites have multiplied in many languages, offering blunt tips on crash dieting, bingeing, vomiting and hiding weight loss from concerned parents.
The bill would make it illegal to “provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or endangering health.”
Critics from the French Socialist Party complained that the bill was vaguely worded and rushed through the lower house by the U.M.P., the conservative party of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Eating disorder experts also expressed doubts about whether such a law would help victims or create even more demand for the sites by publicizing them.
“Ultimately, I think it’s a mistake to ban them because I think that you’re going to be hard pressed to demonstrate in a very clear way that these sites have a direct negative affect,” said Michael Levine, a psychology professor at Kenyon College in Ohio whose specialty is eating disorders and the mass media.
As written, the proposed French law does not make it clear who would be ultimately responsible for the content of such sites — the content creator or the Internet service hosting the site.
An aide to Ms. Boyer, the lawmaker, said the U.M.P. expected the proposed law to be amended to address those questions. He added that the idea was to focus on institutions that promote eating disorders, noting that “we cannot exclude fashion shows if there is a problem of health” or the death of a model.
What do YOU think?
Don’t let anger get the better of you…
April 14, 2008Boiling Point – Mental Health Action Week 2008
Go to: http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/anger
We all get angry. Anger is one of the most basic human emotions. It is a physical and mental response to a threat or something that has already happened. Anger takes many different forms from irritation to blinding rage or resentment that festers over many years. Anger is different for each of us.
Anger is necessary to our survival as individuals and in communities. But it can do harm to individual health and wellbeing and it can occasionally contribute to violence and tragedy. Most of us deal with anger in a healthy way. But for some of us anger can sometimes become a problem. Even if you don’t always express anger, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel it.
Problem anger has been linked to a range of physical, mental health and social problems.
Don’t let anger get the better of you…
Updating
April 14, 2008Network & Forum (N&F) page updated. CONCUR newsletter will follow soon.
