The mental illness awareness group Active Minds is sponsoring a panel on eating disorders Tuesday night in Campus Center room 911 at 7 p.m.

The secretary of Active Minds Samantha Nuerminger said the group is advertising that there will be professionals on the panel that will be speaking, along with students that have had some experience with eating disorders. The panelists will be discussing the effect of eating disorders on the lives of those who suffer from them, as well as the people around them. There will also be a discussion of how to beat an eating disorder.

Nuerminger said the panel is a project for Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which is happening around campus for the entire week. It is a new project, and Nuerminger said that they are hoping it becomes an annual event. It is going to be a discussion and an “open conversation” event, and Nuerminger urged that people should not be embarrassed to come.  She hopes that eating disorders and other mental health issues will eventually become “not such a taboo thing to write about.”

Nuerminger said that Active Minds works to spread awareness about mental health by working in collaboration with the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health at UMass.

The group is beginning to work with a new club on campus called Beautiful Minds, which is a subset of Active Minds that focuses specifically on things like body image, while Active Minds advocates for awareness of all kinds of mental health. Nuerminger says that Active Minds is “excited to start with (Beautiful Minds) and they are a great addition (to campus.)”

Anybody can join Active Minds, and it holds meetings every other Thursday. They can be reached on their Facebook page or by e-mail at umass@[email protected].

Marleigh Felsenstein can be reached at [email protected].