If you’ve ever spent a winter holiday away from the people you love most, you understand how heartbreaking it can be. We know that this is what many of our Alsana clients and their family members are experiencing around this time of year. Desperate to be with the people they love, many clients getting close…
State Sen. Jim Beall is angry. Four times now, he has introduced legislation to better enforce state and federal “parity” laws, which require equal treatment of mental and physical health problems. Four times, that legislation has failed. As he enters his final year in the Legislature, the San Jose Democrat plans what he calls a…
One of the most daunting aspects of anorexia nervosa arises when a patient refuses treatment despite being seriously ill. Due to the egosyntonic nature of AN, a patient may feel the “disorder” is a part of her, and doesn’t want it to go away. Involuntary admission and treatment are particularly controversial for eating disorder patients,…
At 17, Mary Cain was already a record-breaking phenom: the fastest girl in a generation, and the youngest American track and field athlete to make a World Championships team. In 2013, she was signed by the best track team in the world, Nike’s Oregon Project, run by its star coach Alberto Salazar. Then everything collapsed. Her fall was just…
I believe that shame is the most insidious part of the diet/binge cycle. In our diet culture it’s commonplace for people to walk around with an underlying and persistent feeling that something is wrong with them, and that they are to blame. A pervasive sense of loathing seeps into the core of their being. This…
When her 5-foot-1 daughter Lisa returned home from her first year of college weighing just 68 pounds, Vivian Hanson Meehan sprang into action. This was 1974, and, even though she was a registered nurse, Ms. Meehan couldn’t find information to explain her daughter’s dangerous weight loss. Nor was it easy to find a doctor familiar…
Watch Video About Thomas Insel’s TED Talk Last year, about one in five were affected by a mental illness. Thomas Insel says we know how to give the right kind of care, but we’re not doing it. He argues the first step is to talk about it. About Thomas Insel Thomas Insel is a psychiatrist…
My name is Amy Cunningham, and I am a person affected by an eating disorder. I developed anorexia at age 16 when in my first semester of university. Looking back, the early indicators of the illness began probably a year or two prior. I clearly recall beginning a ‘diet’ reading a book that encouraged fasting. …
Whether it’s gluten-free, dairy-free, raw food, or all-organic, many people these days are committed to so-called “clean eating” — the idea that choosing only whole foods in their natural state and avoiding processed ones can improve health. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to eat this way, but sometimes these kinds of food preferences can…
ANAD lost a legend two weeks ago, and so did the entire eating disorder community. In the midst of ANAD Conference 2019 preparations, we were informed that our founder, Vivian Hanson Meehan, died on Tuesday, September 17. She had been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma earlier this summer, and passed away in her home surrounded by…