‘It was like a monster took over me’

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A model presenting a creation by Iris Van Herpen during the 2015-2016 fall/winter ready-t

A model presenting a creation by Iris Van Herpen during the 2015-2016 fall/winter ready-to-wear collection fashion show in Paris. Picture: Patrick Kovarik Source: AFP

WELL-to-do and university suburbs in Brisbane’s west and pockets in Logan and Brisbane’s south have been unveiled as problem spots for youths living with eating disorders.

Shocking figures from the Butterfly Foundation show a 2606 people aged 10 to 24 years have eating disorders in the federal electorate of Ryan, which includes up-market suburbs such as Toowong, The Gap, Bardon, Paddington, Chapel Hill, Brookfield and surrounds.

Those numbers include 224 children aged 10 to 14 years.

But the number of 10 to 14-year-olds with eating disorders is even greater in suburbs of Logan and Brisbane’s south, where 307 children have been identified by the advocacy group using ABS statistics.

A total of 2431 youths in the federal seat of Rankin – which takes in Woodridge, Daisy Hill, Browns Plains, Parkinson, Calamvale, Heritage Park and surrounds – are identified, ranking it second among the state’s most-affected areas.

Eating disorders are mental illnesses and include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and other specified feeding and eating disorders.

Across Queensland, more than 55,300 people are living with the debilitating mental illnesses.

The news comes as advocacy groups and Australian politicians closely watch new French laws that make it illegal to glorify excessive thinness in an attempt to smash disgusting “pro-ana” and “thinspiration” websites, with penalties including jail time.

The sites wrongly advocate the disorder as a lifestyle choice and give advice on how to get through hunger pains and hide symptoms from parents and friends.

The laws, currently going through the French Parliament, also criminalise the use of advertising with anorexic models.

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. Source: CourierMail

Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley said the Department of Health would monitor the French laws closely.

Butterfly Foundation chief executive Christine Morgan applauded the strong measures against businesses exploiting underweight models in advertising and websites that glorified anorexia.

“Any legislation that tries to tackle this form of advertising and promotion and in particular those people who are profiting from it is very welcome,” she said.

Australian Council on Children and the Media president Elizabeth Handsley said Australia could use its classification laws to prevent the glorification of thinness on TV, in movies and online.

“This is not a moral judgment or anything like that … this is a health issue,” she said. “Passing a law can send a very important message.”

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder and one in five sufferers of anorexia nervosa commit suicide.

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DEVASTATING PATH TO THE ‘PERFECT BODY’ IS A HORRIFIC, LIVING HELL THAT CAUSES ONLY DESPAIR

LIVING with anorexia nervosa is like being possessed by a monster, 19-year-old Aimee Gallichan says.

It is not a lifestyle choice.

Diagnosed at 16 and struggling with body dysmorphic disorder, the insidious condition caused an athletic young girl to rage against the “fat and chubby lie” she saw in the mirror. In recovery for two years, she said hospital treatment saved her life.

But she despaired at the glamorisation by some of excessive thinness and the eating disorders that wrecked lives.

Aimee Gallicham is a recovering anorexic. Picture: Marc Robertson

Aimee Gallicham is a recovering anorexic. Picture: Marc Robertson Source: News Limited

Teens who took to websites and social media to advocate eating disorders as the path to a so-called “perfect body” did not know the hell they wished upon themselves, she said.

At 17 and so ill that she could not touch food or water, Aimee was hospitalised and fed through a nasal-gastric tube.

“It’s just so horrific how much control an eating disorder can have over you, getting to the point where I had to be held down by four security guards kicking and screaming and just being in absolute mental torture because it is just so hard and debilitating,” she said.

“It gets such a strong hold on you.

“I just hate the misconception that it’s a choice, that people choose it, because going through something like that, why would you want that?”

Describing the illness as a “living hell”, she said it possessed her completely.

“For me to turn into something like that, looking back, it’s like a monster had taken over me,” she said.

Aimee did not notice it closing in on her. Even when her mother noticed something was wrong, Aimee’s first hospitalisation was involuntary.

Eating disorders are often linked to other mental health issues. Aimee is still treated for depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.

She said she wanted the stigma of mental health issues to fall away and for a better understanding from the community.

One serious misconception was that people of healthy weights could not have eating disorders. Aimee said the mental torture was greatest at times when she was of a medically healthy weight.

She said Brisbane needed more treatment facilities and more day treatment, which people could access before they fell to seriously unhealthy weights and to continue their recovery after hospitalisation.

Anyone needing support with body image or eating disorders is encouraged to contact the Butterfly National Eating Disorders Supportline on 1800 33 4673 (1800 ED HOPE).