Eating Disorders Hit Older Women

More seek help with bulimia in middle age

(October 11, 2006) -- Sorelle Marsh's bulimia began in college.

For a once chubby kid still obsessed with food and weight, discovering how to get away with gluttony was a revelation.

Gobbling thousands of calories and then vomiting up the food "was my best friend," she says. "It was a drug, a way of dealing with everything."

But 20 years later, it had become her worst enemy. So last year, for the first time, the wife and mother of two young children sought treatment for her eating disorder.

"I just hit rock bottom and realized I couldn't do it by myself," Marsh, 43, said recently, sitting in her tastefully decorated living room. "Now, food isn't the issue. I have a lot of anger. I'm still exploring that and trying to articulate it."

Bulimia and the self-starvation called anorexia predominantly affect women in their teens or 20s. But increasingly, therapists are seeing older women who have relapsed decades after successful treatment, or who can no longer hide the health effects of chronic abuse.

"Western women live in a culture of body wars that does not end or disappear when they turn 25 or 30," say psychologist Margo Maine and journalist Joe Kelly, authors of "The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfect." "The picture of the young, vibrant teenager who succumbs to an eating disorder is tragic, but eating disorders are just as destructive in the lives of adult women."

Treatment centers have begun to develop programs designed specifically for older patients. The Renfrew Center of Philadelphia, for example, created separate group therapy sessions for women over 35 after they went from constituting 10 percent of inpatients in 2001 to 17 percent two years later.

"For older women, it's about loss. Loss of youth, loss of children, loss of parents, loss of a spouse, loss of function," says psychiatrist Susan Ice, Renfrew's medical director.

At the same time, adults tend to be highly motivated and co-operative -- unlike many teenagers, who deny they have a problem and enter treatment only to appease their parents.

Marsh typifies such motivation.

She traces her obsession with weight to childhood, when her father bribed her to lose weight with the promise of new clothes and trips. At school, she endured relentless teasing, especially in junior high, when she carried 163 pounds on her 5-foot-5 frame.

She dropped to 102 pounds in college through fasting and laxative abuse. Then she switched to bingeing and vomiting several times a day. After she married her husband, Eric, 14 years ago, she purged less often, but never stopped, not even during her honeymoon or pregnancies.

"My husband knew but chose not to discuss it," she says, her lips revealing the caps that replaced her upper front teeth, which were ruined by gastric acids. "It . . . was my way of coping, so why would I give it up?"

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But she wasn't coping and felt "suicidally depressed" when she entered Renfrew in 2005.

During her stay, she was a model patient but also learned to be more assertive. "It was the first time I ever stood up for myself," says Marsh, who now weighs 125 pounds.

By Marie McCullough
Source: Chicago Tribune

Last updated: 10/06

Related Information:

• Adult Women and the Development of Eating Disorders
• Women, Food and Eating Disorders
• American Idol’s Katherine McPhee Admits to Bulimia
• Great Women Have Been Plagued by Depression and BID
• Bulimia Nervosa Diagnosis
• Distorted Body Image Can Have Tragic Results
• What is Body Image and How Do You Improve It
• Fear of Fat Why Images of Overweight Women are Taboo
• Body Image and Advertising
• Body Image Problems Stop Hating Your Body!
• Body Image Questionnaire and How to Love Your Body and Yourself
• Spring Can Be Dangerous for Those with Eating Disorders
• Understanding and Helping the Suicidal Person
• Young 'Unable to Talk' About Eating Disorders
• Anorexia Nervosa - The Most Deadly Mental Illness
• Know When to Seek Help for Your Child
• Recognizing Eating Disorders in Children
• How Can I Get My Child Started in Treatment
• Where to Find Help for Your Eating Disordered Child?
• Eating Disorders Are Your Problem, Too
• Now You Can Help Your Child Overpower an Eating Disorder
• Parent-to-Parent Tips on Coping With Your Eating Disordered Child
• Helping a Friend with an Eating Disorder - Eating Disorders Center
• Know When to Seek Help for your Child - Eating Disorders
• Teens with Eating Disorders Visit Diet Websites

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