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Old 07-07-2005, 02:39 PM
sugar and spice sugar and spice is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 4,575
honeychile, once someone is over 18 it is very very difficult to force them into treatment for an eating disorder. You essentially have to go through the court system and convince the judge that this person is basically slowly killing themselves -- and that is harder than it sounds. Most women who don't get treatment for their eating disorders before age 18 never go, and even then, it is practically always because they've chose to make a change. As the poster above said, a therapist may be able to get them committed briefly, but that will do nothing for the eating disorder -- in fact, I bet that 9 times out of 10 it would make it worse.

Personally, while I understand the dilemma, I think it would be a bad idea to put her in the kitchen. Speaking as someone who has suffered from eating disorders, I would have had a breakdown if my chapter had tried to put me in the kitchen. No matter what reason they gave me for it, I would convince myself that it was because I was too fat. While I agree that first impressions are important during rush, and this girl may give off the wrong impression, if you treat her like something's wrong it probably will affect her mental health -- and I'm assuming that's not something you want on your conscience.

I like the idea of pairing her up with a rusher who is healthy looking, but if that's not possible, I would honestly just proceed as if everything is normal. Chances are that unless she's frighteningly sick-looking -- i.e. she looks like a cancer victim -- the rushees will probably not even notice. Even if she's really thin, they may just assume it's genetic. You may be taking the rush portion of this too seriously. If I was rushing a house and was rushed by a very skinny girl, even if I did realize that she had an eating disorder, I wouldn't let that reflect on the house itself. Given the staggering number of women with eating disorders, there probably isn't a sorority on campus that doesn't have at least one girl with an eating disorder.

For those of you advocating "getting help" for this girl -- while your intentions are in the right place, you have to realize that eating disorders are extremely complicated and some of your behavior may just be fueling the problem. For example, there are some women who use their eating disorders to seek attention, and any interventions or attention from professionals may just push her to starve herself further. When I got attention from people for being "too thin" or my friends told me that they were worried that I didn't eat, I secretly felt proud of myself and vowed to go even further with my eating disorder. Other times, girls use eating disorders as a way to deal with difficult family relationships, and contacting her parents may just lead to drama/fights/issues that will push her even deeper into using the eating disorder as a coping method. I know both of the above were true for me. And if the sorority tries to push things beyond this girl's comfort level (by contacting her parents or pushing incessant e.d.-related programming on the chapter or whatever), she may end up getting so upset with them that she might leave the sorority, and then you'd have no way of helping her.

Of course, you don't want to let this girl deal with her issues in a vacuum, and sororities can be a very positive vehicle for helping women with eating disorders (contrary to popular sorority stereotypes, when our chapter president had an eating disorder a few years ago, it was her sorority sisters who convinced her to seek help for it). But usually help for eating disorders comes in a more passive form, rather than an aggressive one. When someone is over 18, it's almost impossible to force them to get help, and if they're far enough into the eating disorder, any attempts to force them into treatment will likely end up in them cutting ties with the "forcer" instead -- whether that person is their mother, their boyfriend, or their sorority sister. It's sad, but almost any action that is meant to help someone will in fact usually push them further into eating disordered behaviors. As valkyrie said above, once someone is over 18, it is pretty much up to them to decide they need help.
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