1 in 5

 Sometimes you are harshly reminded of the brutality of an eating disorder.

It is well known that anorexia holds the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition; but what does that really mean?

It means that one in five sufferers of an eating disorder will die. 20%. That figure is terrifyingly high. I personally know many incredible people battling with this illness, and sometimes I forget the statistics… I forget that many of the most beautiful souls I have gotten to know and love, will lose their battle.

When I lost Lizzie two years ago, it felt like my heart shattered. Whilst I had known she was acutely unwell, I never saw her eating disorder. I saw all the things I loved about her; her intelligence, her cheekiness, her kindness. I saw the cup of tea she brought me every morning and the late night chats where we ached with laughter. I saw the woman I could confide in, cry to, hug, and be with. When I found out she had lost her battle, not only the grief hit me, but the shock. Anorexia kills. A couple of days ago, I found out another girl, who again had the kindest of hearts, lost her battle. Eating disorders kill.

I’ve always seen it make its final blow in two ways: physically or mentally, or both. I’ve suffered at the knife edge of both of these separately , and both together. I’ve felt my body giving up, slowly shutting down on me, the pain, the panic as I realised… its going to take me. I’ve felt pushed into a place by the illness in itself, a place of such mental torture that I genuinely believed my only way I could ever be at peace was to end my life. I’ve had my physical health be so bad as a result of anorexia that I didn’t want to be alive to deal with it. For me, I was lucky. I had a considerable amount of help to support me physically and psychologically, help that quite genuinely saved my life.

One reason that this illness is as lethal as it is? Because it tricks you into thinking you are fine. It allows you to rationalise the most irrational of situations. I had doctors telling me I had days, hours left to live, and I genuinely thought I was fine. I shouted and screamed at them, calling them deluded, over dramatic and just plain ridiculous.

Over the years I have become more and more desensitized to the effects of anorexia, mentally and physically. You become accustomed to living in doctors and hospitals, you become desensitised to the symptoms that rattle through your body. Just a few months ago I, somehow, overlooked repetitive fainting, heart palpitations and a general air of feeling unwell, for weeks. Only when I said it out loud to my mum did I realise how much my body wasn’t coping. It was a harsh reality call, but one I managed to turn around. I feel the issue is worsened by treatment teams having the same desensitisation to physical symptoms; they deal all day and everyday with very sick people, meaning symptoms for some are commonly overlooked as they’re not as bad as others. Or worse, they don’t have the resources to react / offer more help with signs of deterioration, instead being forced to work in a reactive way, rather than a preventative way to stop a crisis occurring.

What is my message here? eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. One in five sufferers will die. The number of eating disorders is on an exponential curve as of the last few years, meaning that figure is only going to become more dire. I know it is scary, and I know even I like to keep my head in the sand about it most of the time, but it is also the facts.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, please keep fighting it. Recovery is often proposed as a choice; when in fact its not. As my therapist once said to me, if you are not recovering, you are dying from an eating disorder. That is the harsh truth.

If you are supporting someone in recovery, make sure you check in with them. How they are physically but also mentally, give them a space to talk and allow yourself the time to work through together where you feel you are at.

Eating disorders are scary, they really are. I still believe recovery is entirely possible, but it takes time, and its not a straight line.

Be gentle with yourselves and with the people you love.

Fi xxx