Sorry to intrude, as I'm not AA, but I am a (recovering) anorexic.

re: the "not knowing what an eating disorder is"... I didn't quite read that the same way. In many of the young women I've seen that suffer from eds... they know *clinically* what anorexia, bulemia, body image distortion, etc. are.... but they don't know that they have them. Many to most young women, especially in the "early" stages of an eating disorder, do not realize that what they are doing is abnormal. They do not realize that they are showing the symptoms of a disease, they are just simply acting the way they think they should. So in that sense, I could see her saying "I didn't know what an eating disorder was".... (ie. I didn't realize that it was THIS)

Know what I mean?

On a seperate note, I think it's FANTASTIC that this article was published. I hope that it raises some awareness of a set of diseases that affects ALL subsets of population...rich, poor, black, white, or purple.

Edited to add: I do think we need to not blame parents, too, for not knowing or noticing the disease progressing in their children.

When I was 15, I nearly died. I am 5'8 and weighed approximately 90 pounds. My body systems started shutting down, they simply couldn't function anymore. I was hospitalized for a good long time. Did my parents know I was sick? OF COURSE! I was in the Hospital!! But I also had pneumonia at the time, which I was able to blame my weight loss on (I had only started out at about 110), and due to doctor/patient confidentiality rules, my doctor was not able to tell my parents what he thought my real problem was. An anorexic will lie, steal, do anything necessary to prevent anyone from findng out about her disorder, especially if finding out would mean having to receive treatment and gain weight.

To this day, my parents don't know I have an eating disorder. It's ridiculously easy to hide if you try hard enough. I love my parents to death, but I don't want them to know what I did to myself.