“It was important for me
to tell my story because I want to
help others struggling with
depression and eating disorders.”
She travels around the world training managers
for a company that supports the oil and gas industry,
but the day she arrived at Menninger she was so
overwhelmed, it’s difficult for her to remember
what happened in her first two weeks at The Clinic.
Meet Katherine, a young woman who spent
the first nine years of her life in Singapore, the
next three years in Scotland, and then moved to a
Houston, Texas suburb in middle school. “I was
self-conscious and had an identity crisis,” she said.
“I wanted to fit in but I also wanted to keep my
British identity (my parents are from England).”
Like most American middle schools, there was
an unhealthy emphasis on appearances at this Texas
school. The girls worried about clothes, make-up,
and boys, and they began dieting in an effort to
be thin. The boys didn’t help by taunting the girls
about being fat.
Isabelle Caro (September 13, 1982 – November 17, 2010)
The French actress and model died after spending two
weeks in a hospital with acute respiratory disease. The
cause of her death is unknown, although it was probably
the result of immunodeficiency due to anorexia.
EATING DISORDERS ARE A DESTRUCTIVE
GENETICS AND ENVIRONMENT CONTRIBUTE
WAY OF TRYING TO COPE WITH UNDERLYING
TO DEPRESSION AND EATING DISORDERS
EMOTIONAL ISSUES AND CONFLICTS
Multiple factors distorted her thinking about her
weight. Genetics played a role because there’s a family
history of depression and she was aware her mother
was dieting to keep thin. Moving was an issue, as was
being a middle child. Being exposed to the school’s
unhealthy culture, being a perfectionist with a highachieving personality, not knowing how to express
herself, these were other factors that complicated
an already complicated situation for Katherine.
For the first time in her life, Katherine had difficulty
making friends and she spent most weekends alone
during the first year of middle school. Her anger
at her situation was directed at things. She would
break things, make a mess, she even put a hole in the
wall. She blamed her parents for making her move,
especially her mom, and the situation was compounded
because her parents were angry at her for being angry.
Katherine didn’t know how to solve her problem.
Her parents offered to send her to boarding school
in the U.K. but she didn’t want to go. She started to
act better, and they
praised her good
behavior not knowing
that her anger had
turned inward.
Despite the fact
Katherine was well
within the normal
weight range for her
height and age, she
thought she looked fat.
At age 15, Katherine embarked on a zero-fat
diet that lasted 10 months. She had always loved
baking and continued to make cookies, cakes, and
other goodies but she never ate any of it, until one
day. On that day she decided that she had had enough
of dieting and wanted some freshly baked cookies.
She ate a lot of them – too much for her system –
and so she threw up. She came to believe that she
could control her weight by throwing up and, by
the time she was 17 years old, Katherine ate food
knowing she could purge it. Of course she kept it a
secret, and because she could now drive, she was able
to buy her own groceries and hide them in her room.
continued on reverse
Ashamed and feeling guilty, Katherine turned inwards
more than ever. When it became unbearable, she told
her sister and aunt who then told Katherine’s mom.
EATING DISORDERS CARRY ENOUGH SHAME FOR
THE SUFFERER WITHOUT FAMILY ADDING TO IT
“Not surprisingly, my mom wanted to fix this
problem for me. She made me feel even more guilty
by being overly watchful and making sly comments.”
Katherine’s mom brought her to a child psychologist
who asked a lot of questions about the past looking
for some kind of trauma. There was no single trauma,
there were the multiple factors that included moving
around so much. Katherine’s mom knew the moves
were part of the problem but the doctor did not ask
for her perspective.
By the time Katherine was a senior in high
school, she was so depressed she had to be dragged
out of bed in the morning. Despite the depression,
she was a straight A student because of her perfectionist
personality. At age 18, she left Houston to go to
college, and that’s when more trouble began.
She was bulimic,
depressed and
immersed in a
culture where
drinking was
prevalent. Twice
she drank herself
into a state of alcohol poisoning. That was the final
stressor that pushed her into an acute care facility.
She did everything she was supposed to, got out,
took a break from college, had one more relapse
when she tried to go back to college and FINALLY,
she got to Menninger.
She came to believe that she could
control her weight by throwing up
and, by the time she was 17 years old,
Katherine ate food knowing she could
purge it. Binging and purging came to be
an out-of-body experience for Katherine.
TREATING THE ENTIRE FAMILY IS CRITICAL
TO BREAKING THE CYCLE OF THE DISEASE
At Menninger, there was a very skillful social worker
who helped Katherine address and cope with many of
her issues and helped her family (mom, dad, brother
and sister) learn how to talk to each other. She knew
her family had reached a major breakthrough when
the social worker asked her dad a question and he
turned to Katherine and asked, “How does that
make you feel, Katherine?” At that moment, she felt
very loved and also proud of her father for participating
in her therapy and discussing feelings (something
he wouldn’t normally do) for the sake of his
daughter’s health.
Katherine was at Menninger for three months,
longer than most people, but that’s what she needed.
She will always remember the respectful way she was
treated. Today she feels she’s a stronger woman having
been through Menninger treatment because, among
other things, she knows herself and respects herself.
“It was important for me to tell my story because
I want to help others struggling with depression
and eating disorders.”
“It was such a relief to have people I trusted
take control for me. I had to eat normally while
I was there and dig deep into my feelings.” By then,
Katherine’s mom had become very supportive because
thankfully a nurse from Katherine’s first hospitalization
explained how a person with this type of eating
disorder sees herself in the mirror and explained
that such people carry enough guilt so the family
should not add to that. Katherine’s mom came to
understand that the biological nature of eating
disorders is the most important fact to accept.
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