Page 1187 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 9 April 2008
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There is a government program, but I have to say that this disorder does not suit a one-size-fits-all approach. The disorder needs to be talked about this week during Youth Week, and today I will be honoured to be one of the guest speakers at the launch of an art exhibition by sufferers, promoting awareness of the experience of eating disorders and body image issues. I am concerned that we may not be doing enough. We are doing some good things but I do not know that it is actually enough. We know that the mortality rate for anorexia is five times that of the general population of the same age, with death from natural causes being four times greater and deaths from unnatural causes 11 times greater and that anorexia is the most fatal of all psychiatric illnesses. Mortality rates after 20 years of age range from 15 to 20 per cent. The mortality rate for bulimia nervosa is estimated to be 19 per cent. And it is worth noting that, after obesity and asthma, anorexia is the most common disease in females aged 15 to 24.
It really is important that we keep talking about it, that we keep hearing from people. Young sufferers have talked to me and it seems there is a lot of misunderstanding in the community. As one of these young ladies is reported as saying:
“Some people think it is a whole bunch of middle-class rich girls in high school who want to be thin and look like tabloid magazines and that is not true,” she said.
“It affects a lot of people. It affects girls, it affects young boys, it affects people after they are teenagers, and a lot of people do die from it, but a lot of people seem to flip it off and think they will get over it.
“I know I copped a lot of flak at school.
She mentions young males. The disorder predominantly affects young women, but in 2006-07 in the ACT 18 people, including two men, were admitted to the anorexia day program, with an average stay of 11.3 weeks. In the same period, 37 people were treated for bulimia, binge eating and unspecified eating disorders. So it is one of those quiet, unspoken things at the moment. There is shame associated with it; people feel ashamed to talk about it, which is very sad. Another young lady sufferer said:
“People have always told me they knew I was in trouble from the minute my eyes clouded over. They were like, ‘Noelle is not there any more.’ And it is true, at my treatment centre if you look at some of the really, really sick clients their eyes are clouded and they are not looking at you clearly, they are not in their head—it is probably because at the moment their head is too difficult a place to be.”
Words like this seem hard for some of us to comprehend. They talk a lot about head space. It is so difficult to imagine. When my daughter had the problem, back then we thought she was just rebelling, she was just trying to get attention, she was just being naughty or something. But it really is not that; it is something that we do not understand and that we need to understand a lot more about. Another lady said:
A lot of people when they found out I had an eating disorder would say things like ‘She doesn’t really have an eating disorder—she is just doing it for attention’
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