The fact that society unconditionally endorses this type of mental illness is unsurprising

"Endorses" is an understatement. There are TV shows fetishizing the morbidly obese, parading them like side-show freaks, implying they're heroic for confronting their massiveness at the eleventh hour before their organs shut down. They have entertainment value, allowing most of the run-of-the-mill obese audience to cluck,"Well, I'm not THAT far gone . . . yet."