EATING DISORDERS CAN BE DEADLY IF NOT TREATED

Anorexia and bulimia sufferers must cope with the problem leading to illness.

Many people think dieting, weight loss and eating disorders are a recent phenomenon, but they can be traced back much further.

"If you go back in the medical literature, there are instances of eating disorders back in the '50s and in the '30s," says Dr. Jerry Fletcher, a psychiatrist with Indiana Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which treats children and their families.

"You'll find eating disorders way back into the medieval times. The young ladies that used to be anorexic back then would go to monasteries and convents and stay there."

Fletcher's job is to treat eating disorders _ anorexia and bulimia.

Anorexia is an eating disorder in which adolescents _ almost always females _ starve themselves. They always think they look fat when they are really thin. A teen is more likely to become anorexic when she (or he) is from 15 to 18 years old. It is not easy to know that a person is anorexic because it takes about a year to diagnose.

Bulimia is an eating disorder in which adolescents binge and then purge (consuming large quantities of food and then vomiting). It is possible to have bulimia and anorexia at the same time. Bulimia takes four or five years to diagnose because the bulimic tends not to lose weight as rapidly as the anorexic.

In an interview, Fletcher said that when a patient comes to him, he talks to the person and explains the dangers of eating disorders.

Just how dangerous may surprise you:

About 10 percent of anorexics die, while 25 percent to 30 percent are treated successfully the first time.

Bulimia recurs in about 60 percent of the people afflicted with it.

During an eating binge, a bulimic can consume 40,000 to 50,000 calories a day _ about 10 to 15 times what the average person eats.

Curing eating-disorder patients "is a very easy thing to say, but it's a very difficult thing to do," Fletcher says.

We asked him how he cures eating disorders in kids.

In general, he says, you teach the child to deal with what led to the disorder and get the child to talk about it with the family.

"For the bulimic patient, you need to get them to be able to tolerate emotions better, to be able to express emotions in ways other than binging and vomiting, to kind of release the anxiety that . . . starts the binging cycle," he says.

For an anorexic, who tends to be an obsessive person who needs to be in control, "You have to get her to try to make that less of an issue, less important, and to get her to handle spontaneity better."

A lot of times, eating-disorder patients are hospitalized to try to change their behavior.

While in the hospital, anorexics are monitored and retaught healthy eating habits. In addition, the patients agree to gain one pound a week until a normal weight is reached.

Bulimics are also watched closely so they can't go into the bathroom to throw up what they've eaten.

"Both anorexia and bulimia are psychiatric illnesses, and they are not illnesses of weight loss," Fletcher said. "They are mental illnesses that have to do with how a person thinks of himself."

That's what Children's Express found when we talked to Mary, a 14-year-old high school freshman who suffered from anorexia.

"I wasn't feeling real good about myself, and I thought I was fat, so that's how it started," she said. "If I went into the kitchen, I would get mad at myself because I would start eating. But after a while, I just didn't want to (eat). So it wasn't any big deal to try to not eat."

Mary's parents took her to the family doctor, and she later went to St. Vincent's Stress Center for treatment.

"I'm proud of myself for overcoming it," she said. "I still sometimes think I'm fat and want to quit eating, but then I know better because of all that I've been through."