“Sugar Coated: The Truth About Eating Disorders”

Sugar Coated is a collaborative youth-produced social justice documentary film created by high school students across New York City participating in EVC’s flagship program.

Eating disorders are a mental health issue and have the second highest mortality rate of any psychiatric diagnosis, outranked only by opioid disorders. Why hasn’t this been said publicly? How does mental health correlate with eating disorders? How can you cope with mental health issues during a pandemic? How has living through the pandemic increased mental health and eating disorders? 97 percent of individuals hospitalized for an eating disorder were also diagnosed with a mood disorder. Many people in New York City are not concerned about living a healthier lifestyle. In this documentary, we will present how mental health correlates with eating disorders.

The story first introduces mental health issues by showing its history. Then, we show how it evolved over the pandemic. The segments included are different perspectives from a healthcare professional and a mental health advocate, interviews from individuals with personal experiences with eating disorders and mental health diagnoses. We also feature anonymous stories and how social media has an effect on teen mental health. Within our film we profile our classmate, Dulce as she talks about her struggle with an eating disorder. We also created an anonymous survey so everyone can share their story as this topic is not often wanted to be disclosed. One of our interviewees is therapist Laura Van Wyk who also had a personal experience battling her own mental health issues. We present statistics on mental health for our audience to see how important this topic is.

When watching this documentary people will get a deeper understanding about how mental health correlates with eating disorders. People will know that they’re not alone and mental health should be normalized. Our hope is that this documentary helps others seek help for their mental health disorders. Eating disorders are a real life issue, and people can use this documentary as an example to find support. While this documentary is generally for everybody, it is mostly for teenagers who feel like they’ve been ignored, parents whose children have been struggling with eating disorders , and people who haven’t been through mental health issues to understand others who have. People are going to be interested in seeing this documentary because it includes personal stories and is created by students.

Our documentary film project focuses on the mental health challenges of living with an eating disorder and healing from it. We shine a spotlight on mental health issues during the pandemic directly connected to eating disorders. Informing people about eating disorders, teen mental health, and disparities in the medical community because of race, class and age are the major needs we address. Sharing vulnerable stories through various interviews including anonymous ones, along with self-reflection by our youth producers is how we documented perspectives on these challenges.

Our design process began with brainstorming trending topics and personal stories of interest. As a group we agreed to pick a topic we believe needs more light shed upon it. Then we chose the topic of mental health through pitching and democratically voting. Eating disorders are the specific mental/physical/emotional health challenge we ultimately decided to make this project about due to many of our fellow students’ personal experiences during the pandemic.

If we were to continue this documentary project we would expand it to a series. Profiling people and families in different cultures and religions about their views on eating disorders and negative stereotypes is how we would build upon our original film. We would also conduct in-depth surveys to show how many people go through these issues and collect more details on their experiences.