As a psychiatrist, Dr. Harvey Widore, M.D. has had many patients who struggled with eating disorders. In this multi-part article series, he shares the story of one girl - Debbie - who weighed less than 100 pounds when he first met her.

"...when she walked into my office for our initial meeting, Debbie's legs looked like sticks. Protruding above the jacket, her skull-like head barely balanced on her spinal column, the virtual absence of neck muscles giving her the appearance of a bobble-head doll. Had she taken off the jacket I would have seen that her body had no breasts, no stomach, no buttocks - all victims of the soft tissue and muscle atrophy that follows severe protein deprivation. Debbie looked like a concentration camp victim, but the agent of her starvation was not a concentration camp guard. It was Debbie herself."

Many in the medical community believe that the number of deaths attributed to eating disorders is too low. Often, the cause of death is said to be cardiac arrest or some other condition which is actually brought on by the eating disorder.

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Labels: anorexia, health_care, starvation