Voices of Eating Disorders

The New York Times is running a "Patient Voices: Eating Disorders" feature today, which includes interviews with female and male sufferers at different points of recovery. A mother of one of the sufferers is also interviewed.

Patrick Bergstrom talks about the connection between perfectionism and eating disorders, and how he struggled to recover in a treatment center that catered mostly to women. Emily Hertz, a recovering anorexic, remembers a comment her grandfather made to her when she was just nine years old: "If you keep eating those Skittles, you're going to get fat." Kirsten Haglund, Miss America 2008, reflects on how her eating disorder isolated her from the people she cared about. Disappointingly, there is not much ethnic diversity here, which doesn't do much to dispel the myth that eating disorders are a white issue. That said, the piece is definitely worth checking out.