Anoova Sattar

Anoova Satar attends high school in Olympia, Washington. 

I am currently raising awareness of eating disorders and related behaviors in South Asians through Shuno. Shuno involves collecting submissions from South Asians across the world willing to share their experience with this type of illness, and these accounts will eventually be aggregated into a format that emphasizes the fact that eating disorders don’t discriminate and the global impact of them. Other components include the creation of a directory specific to South Asian clinicians who specialize in eating disorders, as the need for culturally-competent care is clearly unmet. Personally, my family is from Bangladesh, so that is how I’m connected to this region, and my personal experience with anorexia is what led to my interest in advocating for more representation in this field. 

The purpose with this website is to provide a space free of judgement and invalidation and I hope that visitors of the website are encouraged to seek treatment or utilize the resources I am working to create. I also would like that people use it for educational purposes, such as being able to better understand how South Asians’ interaction with stigma around eating disorders is different from other demographics, or to educate family members on how to help someone they know experiencing the disorder. There is extremely minimal discourse on mental illnesses overall in this community, but eating disorders are especially normalized, and Shuno is working to change the narrative that the individual is at fault for their experience with an eating disorder and that one doesn’t need to appear “sick enough” in order to be treated. My initiative involves uplifting experience rather than minimizing it. 

For more information on the project or if you’d like to get involved, feel free to email me at anoovasattar@gmail.com. The Instagram for Shuno is @shunoeatingdisorders.  The Shuno website can be accessed by clicking on the home page image below.