Albury eating disorder clinician Karen Black to host online Body Kind workshop

Anyone is welcome to join the The Body Kind workshop, which will be live streamed on Thursday, September 14 from 4.30pm, as part of Body Image Awareness Month.

Albury psychologist and credentialed eating disorder clinician Karen Black has organised the event, which has been adapted from a school program designed by The Butterfly Foundation.

The workshop encourages young people to be kind to their own body - and to others; and to be 'Body Kind' online as well as face to face.

Ms Black said one of the aims of the event was to help young people learn to become "savvy, critical consumers of media" and to "develop strategies to promote and protect their body confidence in the future".

"Participants will identify how personal and social media can promote appearance ideals, with negative consequences for themselves and those around them," she explained.

"They will learn how to recognise appearance-related pressures and explore how images of people in professional media often misrepresent reality; how they are altered to sell products or services."

But most importantly the workshop is designed to help young people build body confidence and avoid valuing themselves and others based on appearance.

"Young people can develop respect for their own individuality and the diversity they see around them, gaining skills and confidence to be the best version of themselves," Ms Black said.

"They will recognise that comparing people and things by the way they look is human nature but also that those comparisons can be harmful."

The 90-minute workshop, designed to run in classrooms, will be led by a panel including Ms Black, provisional psychologists Kim Thompson and Samantha Pond, and mental health accredited social worker Madeline Trump.

Ms Black said those who joined the live stream would be invited to participate in the panel discussions with the opportunity to ask questions "in real time" - either via comments in the live chat or via private message.

(The workshop will also be recorded so that people can access content later.)

OUR EATING DISORDER CRISIS:

Throughout September, Albury's Laneway Counselling will be raising awareness of body image and eating disorders, including the fact that more than one million Australians experience an eating disorder in any given year.

It highlights that eating disorders are not a choice - they are serious and complex, with one of the highest mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses.

In addition to the Facebook live event, Laneway Counselling has been sharing information, activities and videos as part of its month-long campaign, remembering that:

Ms Black hopes the workshop will help cultivate Body Kind champions who will commit to actions that will help build body confidence in themselves and others.