Eating your heart out: Why eating disorders are not about food

“This is an illness, a psychiatric disorder. It’s about deeper issues, about needing to be in control, needing to be perfect. It’s about an inability to handle and express feelings.”

“People think it’s about vanity, about looking for attention. They have this attitude ‘you’re doing it to yourself’.”

EATING disorders specialist Suzanne Horgan has never forgotten her 14-year-old client who, dehydrated from an eating disorder, was in hospital getting re-hydrated. The doctor said: ‘Do you realise you’re taking up a bed on someone who’s really sick?’