Please read the excellent, but disturbing medical article Obesity in social media: a mixed methods analysis.
You will quickly understand the need for physicians and other medical professionals to be more engaged on social media.
In this study, which looked at the word occurrences of 1.37 million posts on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Forums and Comments over a 2 month period in 2012, there was an overwhelming use of the term ‘fat” , rather than obese.
In addition, the use of the word fat in a derogatory sense was overwhelming employed.
Take a look at the top five occurrences of the words fat, obesity, and overweight (note that obesity and overweight are not even represented)::
| Terms | Occurrences |
| Fat a*** | 100,632 |
| Fat people | 100,632 |
| Fat girl | 100,632 |
| Fat so | 100,632 |
| Fat b****** | 100,632 |
Every medical professional knows – or should know – that obesity is a disease, and needs to be evaluated and treated as such in a nonjudgmental manner.
Sadly, this article, which certainly reflects the stigmatization of obesity accurately online,- probably represents community attitudes towards obesity.
This is a must read article for obesity physicians so they can clearly understand the level of obesity stigmatization online.
However, this article is also a must read for all medical professionals, because it explains the need for their professional online engagement – particularly within the social media.
We cannot let the voices of ignorance and hatred go unchecked.
We need to raise our voices, the voices of reason and compassion, on social media to help our patients and our community.