This is not to suggest the current surge in diagnoses is anything but “genuine” — it is. Nonetheless, as I recall from my own experience of anorexia, it is very hard to pitch “ED awareness” in a way that does not make some aspects of the disorder darkly appealing. We are, it seems, more aware than ever — but have not caught up in terms of investment, prevention or cure.

In the meantime, the effect of diagnosing an eating disorder without being able to offer treatment straight away can be devastating. On a practical level, the moment a child receives an ED diagnosis concerned adults will become extra-invested in monitoring food intake and weight, activities which — however well-meaning — can be deeply counterproductive when undertaken without professional guidance. Added to this is the pressure — as noted by campaigners such as Hope Virgo — on the sufferer to be “ill enough” (that is, thin enough) to need inpatient treatment at all.

A significant gap between diagnosis and intervention risks intensifying the course of the illness, locking the sufferer into the “sick person” role. It can also create unrealistic expectations regarding what treatment might actually involve. “I will stop doing this as soon as I get to the top of the waiting list” becomes yet another way of justifying remaining ill.

After months of longing for help, a sufferer may finally arrive at a clinic a hundred miles from their home, only to find that the essential battle has followed them all the way there. You still have to learn to eat normally, whatever that means. You still have to live in the same body. There is no magic pill.

Like many girls who are drawn to self-starvation, I don’t think I ever wanted to die. At the back of my mind, I pictured a particular storyline — I might fall ill, terribly ill, but then others would see my suffering and I would feel able to eat again. The actual treatment I received in the late Eighties soon put paid to those delusions, but it was at least treatment of sorts. The favoured model for young anorexia sufferers today tends to be family-based therapy, which involves pressure, fights and ceding control. I cannot begin to imagine the disappointment of waiting months on end to receive support, before coming up against the bitter reality of what “being supported” involves.

Right now, it is easier than ever to fall down the eating disorder rabbit hole. We are more ED-literate, but this is not always useful to girls seeking respite from the pressures of adolescence in a hypersexualised world. These girls are presented with the way into being sick — an excess of information on disordered practices, as dramatic as they are distressing. The way out — the far more mundane process of learning to live — should not be the one thing that is kept out of reach.

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Victoria Smith is a writer and creator of the Glosswitch newsletter.

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