Founded in 1994, the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association provides education about eating disorders and their underlying causes to promote compassion, hopefulness, and healing. Executive director Beth Mayer, who has been with the Newton-based nonprofit organization since its inception, had this to say:

Q. What causes eating disorders?

A. Eating disorders are a response to intolerable feelings. There is a genetic component that makes some susceptible to triggers, but anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorders come into people’s lives for many reasons. It’s no one’s fault. The quicker you get specialized treatment, the better, because the medical complications and 20 percent mortality rate are frightening.

Q. How does your organization help?

A. We want to be the first step for people when they’re struggling, and their discharge plan when leaving a facility. To do this, we collaborate with a network of 200 social workers, doctors, nutritionists, yoga therapists, and other specialists.

Q. How has the field changed?

A. We’re seeing much more prevalence and diversity in people who are struggling with body image. Never would I have expected when I entered the field over 30 years ago that eating disorders would be as rampant as they are. In the 1980s, there were a couple of support groups, few services, and barely a diagnosis. Today, at least 30 million Americans of all ages, races, and economic classes suffer from eating disorders.

Q. Why the rapid increase?

A. In our society, we idealize thinness and think it’s acceptable to make comments about people from the time they’re born. It’s so shaming. We’ve also evolved into thinking we have more control over our bodies than we do. We don’t look at our feet and say, “I wish I was a size 5,’’ but we think critically about every other part of our body.

Q. What is The Sooner the Better initiative?

A. The sooner we get to young people with messages of positive body image, the less likely they are to suffer from poor self-confidence that leads to inappropriate dieting and other behaviors. We do free presentations with schools, PTOs, businesses, clinicians, anybody. We used to ask for a $250 donation, but now we’re looking for grants and individual funders who want to give back. We need to get out into the community and stop this epidemic.

The Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association is located at 288 Walnut St., Suite 130 in Newton. Call 617-558-1881 or visit medainc.org.

Cindy Cantrell can be reached at cindycantrell20@gmail. com.