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Looking back, Christina D’Amico realizes that there were signs when she was younger that she was at risk for an eating disorder.
“I thought everything was completely normal. I thought my life was really good, but when I look back, I see that I had habits that were eating disorder habits.”
Once she became a teenager, those habits developed into a full-blown eating disorder, although D’Amico says it took her a long time to acknowledge how sick she was, even as she became too weak to play sports and was admitted for weeks to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario where she underwent treatment.
Today D’Amico, 18, has come out the other side of a sometimes deadly illness that, while it can affect both men and women, young and old, has been rising sharply in recent years among teenaged girls in Canada. And the stakes are high. Anorexia nervosa, one of the most common eating disorders, has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, according to research.
Between 2010 and 2013, the number of 10- to 19-year-old girls hospitalized for eating disorders in Canada spiked by 42 per cent, the Canadian Institute of Health Information reports. Visits to emergency departments for eating disorders also rose sharply during that period among that group, although hospitalization rates for women, in general, were stable.
D’Amico has been through two rounds of in-patient treatment at CHEO, starting when she was 16. And, crucially, she took part in a year-long day program there, arriving at the hospital at 8:30 each morning and staying until 3:30 p.m., Monday to Friday. That group program, she says, is what really made a difference.
“I can’t explain how much it did for me. I learned stuff about myself that I couldn’t imagine. I was pushed to my limits by other people and myself.”
D’Amico graduated from the program a year ago, telling her classmates, “I am not where I need to be, but at least I am not where I used to be.”
She still receives therapy and ongoing support, but D’Amico says she feels stronger and more confident than she has in a long time.
One sign of her new confidence is that she is on a volunteer trip to the Dominican Republic with her church group this week, which happens to be eating disorder awareness week. The trip, she says, is something she wouldn’t have done on her own until now.
Christina D’Amico, 18, says the support she received at CHEO, and especially in a group program at the hospital, helped her become stronger and more confident.
In addition to volunteering with her church, D’Amico is hoping to help out others struggling with eating disorders.
She has begun a project on Instagram called Project Brave (@project_brave), in which she encourages people struggling to find the courage to talk about their problems and concerns with someone else. Despite public campaigns such as Bell’s Let’s Talk, D’Amica says there continues to be stigma around eating disorders that often make people reluctant to talk about it, or even to ask for help.
D’Amico said people would tell her to be strong when she was struggling. To her, that meant she should be strong enough to do it on her own. Instead, she said, she wants to encourage people to be brave enough to ask for help.
“Project Brave is an inspiration account, with the goal of inspiring people to be brave enough to ask for help and not to suffer in silence,” she said.
“After being in recovery from some nasty illnesses and having negative social media encourage my illnesses, I decided that I wanted to do something positive to help people to not get into the situation I was in.”
One woman from Australia told D’Amico that her project convinced her to get the help she needed. “It really encouraged me to keep doing it,” she said.
Physicians at CHEO and elsewhere are researching the causes of eating disorders and which treatments are effective. Psychiatrists say they believe social media is playing a role in the growth of anxiety and mental illness, including eating disorders, among children and teens.
D’Amica does not want to talk about her weight during the depths of her disorder or other behaviours that she says might somehow provide fuel for others.
Instead, she says, she wants to encourage others struggling the way she was that the future can be brighter and asking for help is one way to get there.
CHEO and the Ottawa Carleton District School Board will hold an information session for parents about eating disorders at Sir Robert Borden High School on Feb. 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. The hospital also has general and youth-oriented information on eating disorders on its website.
查看原文...
“I thought everything was completely normal. I thought my life was really good, but when I look back, I see that I had habits that were eating disorder habits.”
Once she became a teenager, those habits developed into a full-blown eating disorder, although D’Amico says it took her a long time to acknowledge how sick she was, even as she became too weak to play sports and was admitted for weeks to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario where she underwent treatment.
Today D’Amico, 18, has come out the other side of a sometimes deadly illness that, while it can affect both men and women, young and old, has been rising sharply in recent years among teenaged girls in Canada. And the stakes are high. Anorexia nervosa, one of the most common eating disorders, has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, according to research.
Between 2010 and 2013, the number of 10- to 19-year-old girls hospitalized for eating disorders in Canada spiked by 42 per cent, the Canadian Institute of Health Information reports. Visits to emergency departments for eating disorders also rose sharply during that period among that group, although hospitalization rates for women, in general, were stable.
D’Amico has been through two rounds of in-patient treatment at CHEO, starting when she was 16. And, crucially, she took part in a year-long day program there, arriving at the hospital at 8:30 each morning and staying until 3:30 p.m., Monday to Friday. That group program, she says, is what really made a difference.
“I can’t explain how much it did for me. I learned stuff about myself that I couldn’t imagine. I was pushed to my limits by other people and myself.”
D’Amico graduated from the program a year ago, telling her classmates, “I am not where I need to be, but at least I am not where I used to be.”
She still receives therapy and ongoing support, but D’Amico says she feels stronger and more confident than she has in a long time.
One sign of her new confidence is that she is on a volunteer trip to the Dominican Republic with her church group this week, which happens to be eating disorder awareness week. The trip, she says, is something she wouldn’t have done on her own until now.
Christina D’Amico, 18, says the support she received at CHEO, and especially in a group program at the hospital, helped her become stronger and more confident.
In addition to volunteering with her church, D’Amico is hoping to help out others struggling with eating disorders.
She has begun a project on Instagram called Project Brave (@project_brave), in which she encourages people struggling to find the courage to talk about their problems and concerns with someone else. Despite public campaigns such as Bell’s Let’s Talk, D’Amica says there continues to be stigma around eating disorders that often make people reluctant to talk about it, or even to ask for help.
D’Amico said people would tell her to be strong when she was struggling. To her, that meant she should be strong enough to do it on her own. Instead, she said, she wants to encourage people to be brave enough to ask for help.
“Project Brave is an inspiration account, with the goal of inspiring people to be brave enough to ask for help and not to suffer in silence,” she said.
“After being in recovery from some nasty illnesses and having negative social media encourage my illnesses, I decided that I wanted to do something positive to help people to not get into the situation I was in.”
One woman from Australia told D’Amico that her project convinced her to get the help she needed. “It really encouraged me to keep doing it,” she said.
Physicians at CHEO and elsewhere are researching the causes of eating disorders and which treatments are effective. Psychiatrists say they believe social media is playing a role in the growth of anxiety and mental illness, including eating disorders, among children and teens.
D’Amica does not want to talk about her weight during the depths of her disorder or other behaviours that she says might somehow provide fuel for others.
Instead, she says, she wants to encourage others struggling the way she was that the future can be brighter and asking for help is one way to get there.
CHEO and the Ottawa Carleton District School Board will hold an information session for parents about eating disorders at Sir Robert Borden High School on Feb. 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. The hospital also has general and youth-oriented information on eating disorders on its website.
查看原文...
