As if we haven’t seen enough powerful youth uprising over the last month, here’s another batch of students from Florida who are going to help heal your aching heart. Project HEAL is providing grant funding for those who cannot afford eating disorder treatments, and over at the University of Central Florida, their Project HEAL chapter is creating self-care packages for finals week that directly fund their program. Each box contains goodies that are sure to bring some warmth to one of the most high-pressure weeks of their academic careers.
Despite being 32 and thrice a college drop-out, it seems like this finals week self-care box was made for me. It contains some of my absolute favorite things: coffee drinks from High Brew, bath bombs from Lush Cosmetics, various snacks, unisex grooming products, and fun product samples. Basically, it’s guaranteed to lift the spirits of someone you love or, in the words of UCF’s Project HEAL: “make finals suck less.”
But back to the meat & potatoes for a second. Body image and body dysmorphia can stem from tons of things. You have your regular offenders: bullying, athletic pressures, and the bludgeoning force of the media’s beauty standards… But then there are also some less well-known sources: neurological issues, complications surrounding food allergies, auto-immune disorders – even genetics can play a major role in the development of an eating disorder.
Eating disorders aren’t just cruel to your body, they are also expensive. Whether your eating disorder recovery program is in-patient or out-patient, costs are… well, they’re medical bills, and we all know how serious those numbers can be. For example, according a New York Times blog in 2010, an in-patient eating disorder recovery program – which includes physical and psychiatric treatments – can cost $30,000 per week. And that was the average almost a decade ago. On top of that, many health insurance plans (if you’re lucky enough to have one) do not cover such treatments, especially long-term recovery programs.
This means that many students, regardless of family income or background, go without crucial treatment and recovery programs for their deadly eating disorders. Project HEAL is filling this huge gap in our healthcare system by partnering with recovery centers and offering grant funding to those who can’t afford treatments. Hell. Yes.
If you’re down to help this central Floridian chapter of Project HEAL raise some money to save some lives, you can purchase three different self-care boxes ranging from $20-$35. Essentially, you’re getting loot that you’d already probably be buying for yourself or your good friends, anyway… You might as well give the money to people who are literally going to change the world with it!
Click here to order a self-care box from Project HEAL – UCF Chapter
Boxes will be sent out from mid-April to mid-May, so get your order in now!