Remember the last time you ate so much that you felt sick, and with dried marinara on your chin you decried, “I’m in a food coma!”? You had been binge eating, and you could be mentally ill.

On May 18, the American Psychiatric Association released the DSM-5, the most recent update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For the first time in the manual’s 60-year history, binge eating was included. For mental health professionals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, and the legal system, this handbook acts as the official and standard criteria for classifying mental disorders. Since everyone occasionally overeats, the designation of binge eating as a legitimate mental illness almost seems imprecise and excessive, but binging is associated with seriously negative psychological symptoms.

The inclusion of binge eating in the DSM-5 is a contentious issue in the mental health community, because some feel it will be over-applied or linked to common problems with overeating.

To illustrate my point, let’s go back to that food coma. After you’ve overeaten, you didn’t feel well, and you were bummed out, confused as to why you thought six slices of pizza and a two liter of soda was a good idea, and you probably wanted to turn back time and eat a salad. Those feelings are light-hearted representations of depression, guilt, and lack of self control, which are all manifestations of a mental illness.
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Eating disorders affect people from all walks of life, have varying symptoms, and can be easily disguised by those afflicted. Obsessive exercise, starvation, and laxative abuse are some of the most common behaviors of eating disorder sufferers. The reasons these symptoms are developed are wide ranging, but usually boil down to a lack of self-esteem and pressure to fit some imaginary societal mold.

Even the beautiful, rich, and famous suffer from eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. We’ve compiled a list of celebrities—some surprising, some not so much—who have overcome eating disorders and managed to have a healthy relationship with diet, exercise, and themselves.

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As American Idol kicked off its twelfth season, the judges rolled into Chicago to hear auditions. One contestant in particular got attention for her voice, but perhaps more for the struggles she had gone through just to be standing there. Mariah Pulice admitted to America that she was in the early stages of recovery from anorexia.

Anorexia is an eating disorder that affects nearly 24 million men and women in the United States, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders Inc. (ANAD). Pulice falls into the most common gender and age group to struggle with the disorder – teenaged females.

Pulice admitted on last Thursday’s episode that her struggles with eating began in junior high school, saying, “I felt a lot bigger than the other girls.” These feeling progressed and Pulice said by high school she recalled only eating a single slice of American cheese each day. For reference, that’s only about 100 calories and maybe five grams of protein. The fact that Pulice was telling this story was impressive, considering how dangerously she was treating her body.
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“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

While we all aspire to be eternally young, one part of youth we can all do without is the irrational sense of invincibility. That, and the overpowering need to be accepted by the “in crowd.”

With that in mind, it’s not hard to believe that the highest percentage of problem drinkers is college students. Heavy drinking, mixed with youthful hormones and naivety, leads to violence, careless sexual activity, and now something that is being called drunkorexia.

Recent Canadian research has found that young men and women are skipping meals, yet are also consuming a day’s worth of calories in alcohol. In other words, young people who want to lose weight, but still want to party, cut out the meals in order to do so and stay thin. They may also be drinking excessively with the intention of purging previously consumed food.

While it’s not yet a recognized eating disorder, the health risks of drunkorexia are very real. Weight-conscious drinkers are risking nutrient deprivation, liver damage, and death.

It’s not a problem exclusive to the U.S. or college-age kids for that matter.
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Strange food mixtures, also referred to as food concocting, may be an indication of being a binge eater. That’s according to a new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

How do you define strange food mixtures? How about:

• Mashed potatoes and Oreo cookies
• Frozen vegetables mixed with mayonnaise
• Chips with lemon, pork rinds, Italian dressing and salt

The excitement comes in the preparation. In fact, they reported having the same emotions as drug users during the act, which was countered by shame and disgust after the fact.

“While they are food concocting and binge eating they report being excited, in a frenzy, and high, but afterwards they feel awful about themselves,” says Mary Boggiano, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychology and primary investigator of the study.
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