Question About Eating Disorders

Depending on how he goes about it, it would probably be either anorexia or body dysmorphic disorder (when you look at your body and don't see it as it is, but merely the flaws you imagine it to have)

Again, depending on his methods, as well as his activity level, he would probably pass out during some strenuous exercise when his blood sugar got too low.
He'd also probably just be treated like any other runaway, nobody would look harder for him because he has an eating disorder (most runaways could probably be said to have some kind of issue or disorder)

Hope this helps

Jenny17 said:

The character isn't trying to be skinny, he's trying to be really toned really quickly. So my questions:

What kind of illness would this be?
How long would it take for him to become quite sick/weak and colapse?
What kind of treatment for this in an in-patient rehab place?
How long till he could be back dancing 8hrs a day?
If he ran away from home, would police go to special measures to find him as he's so sick?

Thank you so much if you actually finish reading my ramblings and even more if you reply!

Click to expand...

Sounds like body dysmorphic disorder. I had a friend in high school who went from an extreme case of bulemia to being an over-the-top, unhealthy body-builder in a matter of only a couple years. She was "cured" of bulimia for a few years before people realized she still had the same problem, she was just processing it differently; she just needed that control over her own physical body, and bulemia and the strict regimen of her body-building both gave her that.

Also had a guy friend in high school who was obsessed with being "fit" and would work out for hours every day after school. Eventually, he ended up with TWO groinal hernias before the age of 16.

I'm sure there is some kind of inpatient treatment for something like this, but neither of my friends went through anything like that. The girl did for bulemia, but not anything else. Hope that helps a little.

Google "bigorexia" or "muscle dysmorphia." This kind of behavior goes far beyond "bulking up" these days and often includes obsessive working out, overuse of vitamin supplements and health supplements, pushing the body beyond its normal endurance limits, etc. Jeremy Jackson, from Baywatch, dealt with it very publicly on a recent season of Celebrity Rehab.

A quick Google search on those terms should come up with all the info you need.

Overexercising as a way to take or keep weight off is considered a form of bulimia. But dysmorphia sounds right to me, too.

How long would it take for him to become quite sick/weak and collapse?

Depends mostly on calorie intake levels, though there is some difference between people and I don't know exactly what you'll do for him. I was anorexic in my 20's, often eating under 500 calories for months and months. I still worked a regular job, but I couldn't run or even stand for long periods. Here's one real detail you can have 'for free' if you have him undereat: every time I stood up at normal speed for over a decade, I blacked out, and I learned the thing to do was to grab on to some surface really hard, and the blackout would fade about the time my grip loosened, so I only fell over once, despite blacking out many times every day for many years. If, however, I ate 1000 calories a day, I could also do two hours of aerobic dance or running. Either way, you are hungry every freakin' second of every freakin' day, and you think about food all. the. time. I cannot emphasize this enough. It's worse than being in love, as obsession go. You stare at pictures of food or draw pictures or re-write your food intake ten or twenty times a day. You end up being quite boring to talk to because all your talk is of food or how you're doing on your regimen or, most offensive of all, giving advice to others about how they should be doing what you're doing.

For any more serious, long-term collapse, it'd probably take years of this sort of self-abuse.

What kind of treatment for this in an in-patient rehab place?

Oh boy, long and complicated. Briefly, they try to normalize the relationship to food and exercise. There's a lot of close observation. Toilets don't have doors so you can't be vomiting in private. He'd be odd because of being a male--it still is a disease of mostly young women. If the person is underage, family therapy is required. If a person really keeps refusing to eat, and health/life is in immediately jeopardy, they'll be put in a bed, force fed, and kept there until digestion happens. There are body image classes, group therapy, private therapy. Enforcement of no strenuous exercise, which sounds as if it'd be particularly difficult for him. Google whichever diagnostic term you prefer and "inpatient treatment" and you can find more.

If a runaway is over 16, and they don't have rich/connected parents, police really won't look for them at all here in the US. I don't know about London, if that's where it's set, but I bet the police are too busy there, too.

His therapists would NEVER want him to dance eight hours a day--for him, that's a version of the disease. (it may in fact be that for every person--eight hours is too much intense activity day in, day out.) So if he disobeyed them, he'd be lying to them, or he'd give up continuing therapy and probably relapse.

Jenny17 said:

Do you know anything about inpatient therapy for bulemia?

Click to expand...

No, not really, and it has been a few years since high-school so I don't remember much...

The girl was out of school for about 2 months, and when she came back she had put on a lot of weight (in a good way!) but she never wanted to talk about specifics of the program. She still had weird eating habits, and would always go off by herself at lunch because she hated people watching her eat. And again, she had a few months of "normal" behavior before she went to the other extreme (excessive exercising, etc.), so I wouldn't even say the treatment she received was all that effective...

Jenny17 said:

How long would it take, do you think, for him to build up to doing exercise?

Click to expand...

YW.

Even in treatment, they'd likely have an hour's opportunity to walk for those who could. I don't know how sick you'll make him, but the young body is very resilient, and if he was eating normally, he'd come back quickly--a few months, no more than six.

Oh, thought of another detail you could use (or not, whichever). People with eating/body issues often have a big divide between body and mind--their mind wants something but their body doesn't seem to be cooperating (with what are, after all, unreasonable demands). Nearly everyone I've known in this state gets occasionally abusive with his/her own body--they'll grab a muscle that seems not big enough or a part that's "too fat" and grab it hard, in anger, often leaving bruises. They'll punch a body part, again in anger/frustration for it refusing to cooperate with their mind's agenda for it. Bruising occurs more easily when nutrition is poor, and for himself or most of the people in treatment with him, there will be a lot of bruises.

I don't know if it helps any, but I got down to a dangerously low weight (into the mid-low 80's) and had to do something I was afraid would be too strenuous in a matter of months. It wasn't an eating disorder, but the main problem once I started treatment was how much muscle I had lost through weight loss, and how little fat I had on my body (to keep organs healthy... who knew?).

So I was diagnosed and put on treatment in May. By late July I was going to have to carry a backpack around Europe and walk a lot. It went great! It got progressively easier. I wish I knew how much muscle I put on in such a short period; it was fascinating. After I came back (a long time later), I was 130 and very trim, if that helps any.

Jenny17 said:

My first proper post so bare with me if this sounds stupid or is in the wrong place or something!

So in my story one of my main characters becomes quite obsessed with the ways he looks & starts eating/exercising in the wrong ways. He's a dancer in a dance crew full time and they're all very fit so he feels the pressure. I know a bit about anorexia and bulimia as the info is quite easy to find but I'm not sure if that's what I need for this. The character isn't trying to be skinny, he's trying to be really toned really quickly. So my questions:

What kind of illness would this be?
How long would it take for him to become quite sick/weak and colapse?
What kind of treatment for this in an in-patient rehab place?
How long till he could be back dancing 8hrs a day?
If he ran away from home, would police go to special measures to find him as he's so sick?

Thank you so much if you actually finish reading my ramblings and even more if you reply!

Click to expand...

1. The answer to the first question is really that it depends. It depends on the reason that your MC is obsessed with the way he looks. In eating disorders(anorexia/bulimia) the motivation for the disorder is the belief that the patient is overweight despite the reality that they are either at normal or underweight. In body dysmorphic disorder there is a delusional belief that an aspects of the person's physical appearance is defective in some way. Now after this, the next step is to determine what the patient does in response to their belief. If they respond by dieting, fasting, or purging then you're looking at an eating disorder likely. If they choose plastic surgery(liposuction, for example) you might lean towards BDD. Michael Jackson, for example, was a very good example of a person with BDD.
2. In anorexia it depends on the level of dysfunction. How much they restrict their diet. There's no hard and fast rule for this. In bulimia, patients are usually of normal or overweight so I won't worry about being physically "sick" and likely this isn't going to be a dancer. Same with BDD patients, not really physically "sick".
3. For anorexia, if they become physically ill, they usually go into inpatient medical floor first to stabilize them medically. After that they may be transferred to a psychiatric unit for treatment, however those are extremely severe cases. Inpatient treatment for anorexia is very complicated and too much to explain for a message board, but briefly, it involves a lot of psychotherapy(usually psychodynamic and behavioral) as well as some medication management. Bulimia and BDD are treated as outpatients, there isn't any inpatient treatment for those specific disorders.
4. Again, no hard and fast rule. In severe cases that end up on medical floors and then inpatient psych units I would say it would be hard to advise a patient to return to that kind of rigorous activity very quickly. But maybe it can be a plot line for you? Against all odds your MC comes from nowhere to dance again and claim the spotlight...or something like that.
5. I don't know about England, but in America police wouldn't do any more than in a missing person's case. For the mentally ill, the police would need a psychiatrist or psychologist to fill out a commitment order that states the person is mentally ill and dangerous to either self, others, or incapable of taking care of themselves. Otherwise, in America, you are free to be as loopy as you want.

Hope that helped.

Sometimes I see news stories where the police are anxious to find someone who's sick; it's often noted that a missing person needs medication and hasn't got it with them. However, as it's not illegal for an adult to go missing, there are limits to what the police can do.

Something to consider. If he's part of a dance school where they have to dance 8 hours per day, the school usually employs nutritionalists and the teachers closely monitor sudden weight gains/losses and slips in performance for the safety of the *entire* performing group. ie, if he does pairwork or lifts, his sudden weakness would endanger his partners, and he would be excused from that group until he regained his strength.