Eating disorders have long been a taboo subject in society. One non-profit organization in Bratislava hopes to break that stigma.
As a teenager living in Slovakia, Valentina Sedilekova struggled with eating disorders, a situation that worsened to the point that she even attempted suicide.
Instead, after recovery, she decided to do something to help others in similarly dark places. She ran her first public campaign, “Stop Anorexia,” which provided information and education about the disorder.
After meeting professionals interested in eating disorders, Sedilekova understood she could do more, and in 2019, the then 18-year-old launched a group called “Chut Zit” to go beyond simply raising awareness.
Translated into English as “Will to Live” with a secondary meaning of “A Taste for Life,” Chut Zit has come a long way since then, and has provided treatment services and support to hundreds of individuals in Slovakia who suffer from eating disorders, as well as education programs for schools all over the country.
“There’s a lack of professional assistance in Slovakia, and people spend a lot of time waiting,” said Sedilekova. “I realized that I didn’t just want to provide information, but rather wanted to create a network of experts and start an organization that provides real help.”
Multidisciplinary Services
Chut Zit’s office is located on the second floor of an office building in Bratislava, about a 15-minute walk from the center of the New Town quarter. Couches with soft throw pillows, a bulletin board with motivational quotes, and cabinets full of art supplies create a comfortable mood. As an organization designed to help people open up, Chut Zit’s welcoming space is essential in putting visitors at ease.
In 2021, around 20 million people in Europe struggled with eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating, many of which are undiagnosed. Chut Zit operates as a recovery program for those with or without clinical diagnoses. The organization offers a variety of services, including short-term and long-term nutritional consultations, psychological counseling, support groups, and education about the disorders. Clients can also combine these individual services into a longer-term multidisciplinary program, aided by experts from different specialties.
Many patients, particularly those with anorexia, come to Chut Zit after spending time in specialized units to maintain the effects of their clinical treatment, said Veronika Kolejakova, a psychologist who works for the organization.
“[Our patients] are really happy to find us, mostly those who don’t have a diagnosis but don’t have so many options to choose from,” Kolejakova said. “This type of complex multidisciplinary setting is not present in any other organization [in Slovakia]. It’s just us.”
Most of the staff at Chut Zit, like Kolejakova, are not trained clinical psychologists. However, team members hold degrees in other areas that fall in line with the organization’s multidisciplinary approach.
Starting Chut Zit
Founder Sedilekova has grappled with body image issues and eating disorders since childhood. Her struggle with anorexia led her to a suicide attempt – which became a real “turning point” in her recovery and mission to help others dealing with similar issues, she said in a 2019 interview with Heroes.sk.
Sedilekova is also a published author of a fantasy trilogy and an autobiography about living with anorexia. Currently, she studies psychology at Trnava University in western Slovakia.
To get Chut Zit off the ground, Sedilekova worked without pay for almost five years – part of the time while still in high school. She recruited Martina Paulinyova, a psychiatrist, and Ivana Kachutova, a nutritionist, who agreed to serve as professional supervisors on the project. With their help, she was able to launch the program’s first prevention workshops. They continue to serve as Chut Zit’s service guarantors.
“We hired our first full-time employee before I got my first paycheck,” she said. “It was hard building the organization alongside my school duties and my professional duties, dedicating a lot of time to it, but not making any money.”
The program grew over the years and now offers help in 10 areas led by 27 experts, including a free helpline.
Sedilekova estimates that 40-50% of Chut Zit’s participants come from Bratislava. However, the organization does offer some online programs, such as free weekly online support groups (called Stationary), allowing those living in more isolated locations or even internationally to benefit. Stationary also has an option for the parents of the group’s clients, which meets once a month via Zoom. Sedilekova hopes to expand the organizational base to other Slovak cities in the future.
Breaking the Stigma
In 2018, Sedilekova and Chut Zit’s co-founder, Robert Slovak, surveyed around 1,050 people about public awareness and opinions about eating disorders via a crowdfunding campaign on the Startlab platform. The results were alarming.
“Many Slovaks believed that anorexia is just a fad,” she said. One particularly concerning statistic to her was that one quarter of respondents wouldn’t look for medical assistance if they had an eating disorder. “These are quite large numbers. That’s why educating people about eating disorders is so important.”
Sedilekova wants to ensure that certain myths about eating disorders are unlearned. Only 6% of people who struggle with an eating disorder are also underweight, and Sedilekova worries that people “often feel they are not ‘sick enough,’ ” she said.
Anorexia has one of the highest mortality rates among mental disorders, and this is important for the public to know, she said.
“We’re saying that this is a serious disorder … and that it’s important to seek professional help from the very first symptoms,” she said. Currently, approximately 90% of Chut Zit’s clientele are women and girls. Nonetheless, she says, “It happens to boys as well as girls, and not just kids but also adults.”
After the formerly communist countries opened up, a boom of Western diet fads in the 1990s swept Europe, which Kolejakova cites as one stimulus for the growth of body dysmorphia, or the mental preoccupation with perceived physical flaws.
“There were so many methods. Everything that was American was good. People didn’t distinguish,” she said. “Now it’s more about the social influencers. They could be from anywhere.”
On top of that, Slovak culture, like many others in Europe and elsewhere, emphasizes meals as a form of togetherness where friends and families congregate, Kolejakova said. This tradition may pose problems for those who are suffering.
“The food and eating is a crucial bonding mechanism in families or in between friends,” she said. “People who are somehow not fitting in feel really lonely, or very often they isolate themselves from this.”
A family member of someone who received treatment at Chut Zit, who wished to remain anonymous, has observed a lack of knowledge most frequently among older people.
“The generation of our parents simply does not understand what an eating disorder is,” he said. “They somehow believe that this has to do with eating primarily … They don’t look at the mental side of it.”
The limited number of state services available is also a barrier, he said. In 2018, Radio Slovakia International reported that there were more than 15 hospital beds for each physician trained to work with mental disorders.
“We have terrible numbers when it comes to psychiatrists in general,” the client’s relative said. “It partly goes back to the past when people were ashamed to admit that they were even seeing a psychologist or therapist.”
Kolejakova further attributes some of the resistance to the failure to properly recognize eating disorders during the communist era.
“As far as I know, this has been a very hidden diagnosis,” she said. “For us, it’s really interesting that some mothers of our clients actually discover that they had this disease that was never diagnosed officially or treated.”
Making the Choice to Find Help
After two years of hiding her anorexia from her parents, Timea Fedorova finally sought treatment at Chut Zit. The organization provided Fedorova, a psychology student at Trnava University, the services of a nutritionist, a psychologist, and a peer support counselor. She also met other people who were struggling via the program’s support groups.
“The organization is helping everybody who is surviving or trying to battle some kind of eating disorder,” Fedorova said. “And for me, it was one of the biggest [kinds of] support – they give us hope that it is possible to live differently and to be happy.”
Chut Zit’s services can be particularly beneficial for people without the resources to afford their own therapy, said the client’s relative mentioned above.
However, various obstacles prevent the program from having a greater impact. From a clinical perspective, Kolejakova pointed out, eating disorders are particularly hard to treat. Not all those who suffer from these disorders realize that their habits are unhealthy, or wish to modify them.
“The diagnosis is quite resistant to change,” she said.
Eating disorders are also much more difficult to treat than other mental illnesses, such as anxiety, Kolejakova said. Anxiety is often “ego-dystonic, meaning the patients or clients are not happy about it,” whereas eating disorders tend to be “part of their lifestyle,” she said. “It’s not even they who bring up the fact of the illness. They have to accept it first.”
Sedilekova knows that protecting the organization’s good name requires attentive care to their facilities and staffers, from setting up services to building a safe environment and guaranteeing high quality, she said.
“All of these challenges are still here, and we are always trying to overcome them,” she said.
That costs money.
After starting out by offering services to clients free of charge, the program began facing financial dilemmas. Grants weren’t covering all of their bills, and the professionals employed sometimes found themselves being stood up.
“Clients would book appointments with our expert, which were free of charge, but then they wouldn’t show up,” said Sedilekova. “So then what – should we pay the expert, even though the client didn’t come?”
In response, she devised a new method of voluntary contributions for clients to pay only what they could afford. Starting this year, if they are able to pay the full amount, they receive some perks including longer treatment periods if necessary and personalized selection of professionals. Other clients can still receive the services for a lesser amount or even free of charge via fundraising by Chut Zit’s associated civic association EDI Slovensko.
“After some time, as demand for our services kept increasing but we still only had the same means at our disposal, our waiting list grew to be one year long. We could only accept very few clients … but our system worked,” Sedilekova explained. “People started contributing to some degree, and we could start investing that money in people who are normally very hard to raise funds for.”
The city of Bratislava provided a grant to the program in 2022. Other corporations and organizations, which are listed on Chut Zit’s website, have also served as project partners and sponsors. One way for individuals to contribute is by ticking the 2%
The assignment of a 2% income tax donation is one way for individuals to contribute directly to the organization, but unlike the case of corporate charity, the percentage cannot be divided up between different non-profit entities, which leads to a competition between non-profits for one person’s full charitable support. This has not yet proven to be an effective means of funding an organization as small as theirs, Sedilekova said.
Coming Full Circle
In January 2022, Chut Zit only had one psychologist on hand for counseling. As of November 2023, they count seven. Sedilekova notes the visit of Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova this year as a major turning point for the organization. The president was able to meet some of the clients and listen to their stories, which affirmed Sedilekova’s belief in the impact of Chut Zit’s mission.
Chut Zit has provided 3,831 hours of psychological counseling and nearly 8,400 people have taken part in its workshops, according to its website. The group even offers peer-consultant education courses to connect current participants with those who have dealt with eating disorders in the past, furthering the cycle of support. Former patient Fedorova completed her course in two weeks and now serves as a peer counselor.
“An eating disorder is not a decision, but recovery is,” said Fedorova, now two years out of the program. “I had to decide that I wanted to recover.”
Sedilekova wants the same for all of those who utilize the organization’s resources.
“We’re not telling people that this is a bad disorder and this is what you have to do,” she said. “Instead, we’re trying to accompany people on their journey, so that they can live without the disorder, so that they can recognize that they don’t need it anymore.”
…
Lydia Smith is a student at Ohio University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in media and social change and minors in French and geography. She is also the editor in chief at Buffed Film Buffs. She was an editorial intern at Transitions in the spring of 2023.
