Back to School, Back to Bulimia
I hope everyone is having an enlightened Mental Illness Awareness Week. I tried writing about it yesterday, then my computer at work crashed and I lost the entry, along with quite a lot of copy I hadn’t saved. I’ll try to rewrite it soon, so don’t forget about awareness issues, but I wanted to post something else to break the lost post curse.
Two articles came out this week on how school triggers eating disorders. A study at the University of Alberta found that entering university can have a negative impact on body image and eating. “The researchers found that female students who lived away from home were three times more likely to report symptoms of binge eating compared to those students living with parents during their first year of university studies. Also, students who felt dissatisfied with their bodies were three times as likely to report symptoms of binge eating when entering their first year of studies.”
Remuda Ranch, a residential treatment center in Arizona, also released a piece on the dangers of starting school. “Starting a new school can create an enormous amount of anxiety for young women,” said Jennifer Lafferty, staff psychologist at Remuda. “Going to a new school means entering a new social environment where one’s social status is unclear. The majority of teens today associate being thin with being attractive, popular and well-liked by others.”
Personally, my eating disorder went from problematic to chronic when I went to university. Both studies point out the perfect storm that college can produce. To begin with, I had already established controlling my weight as a coping mechanism, so I translated all my discomfort into disordered eating. And I was extremely uncomfortable. I moved from my lifelong home in suburban Chicago to the decadent southern atmosphere of Vanderbilt University. The girls were perfectly manicured, very thin and overtly flirtatious, the boys were loud and entitled, 50% of the students were Greek. My creative independence translated into isolation. At the end of the first week I threw out my Birkenstock’s, replaced my poetry with parties and sank into the worst year of my life. In many ways, my eating disorder saved me. It was the thin, obsessive string that kept me from drowning. But ultimately, it became my hangman’s rope. In that first year my eating disorder burrowed so deeply into my brain, became so ingrained in my body, that it still touches everything I do.
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Oct 28, 2007 at 3:47 pm
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