How Stigma Keeps Us Sick
Stigma. It exists and it impacts all of us who are affected by mental illness. I’m sure this isn’t new information, but a reminder now and then about the dangers of stigma doesn’t hurt. Plus, I’m feeling rather irate after the week I’ve just had. As you might know from reading my last few posts, my battle against Blue Cross Blue Shield, thankfully, ended well. Ultimately, I got (mostly) what I needed: I was granted 10 more days in treatment. But it came at a cost. During my week without treatment, my eating disorder was constantly at my heels. In order to build my case...
Read MoreNational Suicide Prevention Week: An Open Letter to a Survivor
This week is the 2014 National Suicide Prevention Week. Suicide is a topic that has been hitting home lately, having experienced three brushes with suicide among friends and acquaintances this year, two of which were successful. Suicide is a difficult topic to talk about, because it spotlights what most of us try to run from — our mortality. For me, trying to fathom the literally unimaginable moment I cease to exist brings up something akin to horror. To then grapple with the startling truth that we each have the capacity (and occasionally the impulse) to deliberately launch ourselves into...
Read MoreMidway Through Recovery: What Do I Need?
Throughout recovery from an eating disorder, you need different things at different points of the process. Early on, your needs may be very concrete: you need encouragement during meals, regular check-ins with your support system, a shoulder for the copious tears that accompany recovery. I’ve always found it difficult to articulate my needs; it has been even more difficult to come up with an answer now that I’m here in the middle ground. My needs are less concrete now, because my task is to gradually take responsibility for my own recovery. I need to bring myself to follow my meal plan, even...
Read MoreDispelling Eating Disorder Stereotypes
White teenage female. Private school student in an upper middle-class suburb. Inveterate perfectionist. Anorexic. At age 14, I typified the so-called eating disorder stereotype. These illnesses have long been associated with middle- to upper-class young white women, even among the most sympathetic professionals. (Hilde Bruch, a pioneering eating disorder practitioner, said in her 1978 book The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa that anorexia primarily affects girls raised in “privileged, even luxurious circumstances.”) Unfortunately, stereotypes still prevail, in part because eating...
Read MorePart 2 — Insurance: The Greatest Barrier to Recovery
If I eat and gain weight, will I be considered “too healthy”? If I don’t eat and lose weight, will I be considered “noncompliant”? One reason why eating disorders are so difficult to treat is because, in addition to addressing symptoms, you must first convince the patient that he or she is actually sick. She might deny that she has any problem whatsoever with her eating habits and other behaviors. Or, even if she admits to struggling, she might insist that she is nowhere near as sick (i.e., as thin) as other patients. So, imagine the ED patient’s confusion and distress when, after...
Read More
