SFU student Claire Sieffert is petitioning for a national eating disorder policy the old-fashioned way: one postcard at a time.
After receiving positive feedback for her UnmaskED project, a photography project featuring intimate portraits of individuals who have a history with eating disorders, Sieffert has launched the PostED project through the Post Your Change organization, which she founded. The PostED campaign is focused around individuals creating postcards to send to Canadian politicians, urging them to create a comprehensive national eating disorders strategy.
In an interview with The Peak Sieffert shared her thoughts on how the healthcare system deals with eating disorders currently: “I think it’s pretty abysmal. [. . .] We’re always comparing ourselves with the US, and on healthcare, that’s something we’re proud of. I think eating disorders is a department where we can’t be proud of our healthcare system.”
The campaign takes a hands-on approach by asking participants to either write or illustrate their answers to the questions, “What does a community that supports people with eating disorders and mental wellness look like to you?” or “What positive change do you want to see so that people with eating disorders are supported in Canada?” onto a postcard, which they then hand to Sieffert and she mails off to the MPs in House of Commons at a rate of one postcard a day, until May, the month’s first week being Canada’s Mental Health Awareness Week.
“This way is [one way] for the community to connect by actively going hands on and making this postcard and sending it to politicians. I think that shows a real willingness for change,” Sieffert stated.
Sieffert cited her partnership with the National Initiative on Eating Disorders as an important source in helping her understand Canada’s current policy, and thinking of changes and improvements the both of them would like to see made, which are written on the back of each postcard.
Some of these proposals include increasing medical professionals’ training on eating disorders, allocating more funding for eating disorder treatment, upholding a commitment to universal care, and establishing interprovincial information sharing on eating disorder statistics and best practices.
The cause is especially personal to Sieffert, who was diagnosed with an eating disorder when she was a teenager. Through this project and first-hand experience, she also is trying to frame eating disorders as a mental health issue, rather than simply a “need to eat more.”
“A lot of it isn’t even tied up in body image,” Sieffert said. “I think that’s a dominant misconception [. . .] Eating disorders, at least for me, can be a coping mechanism for stress. It’s a way of when you can’t control anything else, you can control food.”
Sieffert explains, “Unlike alcoholism, where to deal with your addiction, you go sober and you don’t drink alcohol again, [with an] eating disorder, the addiction is controlling food, but you can’t just go off food. You have to face food every day.”
In regards to future plans for the project, she says that for now she’s waiting to see how it further develops before making any long term plans.
Said Sieffert, “We’ll have to see how it is goes. It really is an ongoing effort to break the silence around this issue, so the more conversations we have, the greater the impact of this project and to me that’s pretty profound.”
