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 with eating disorders at a time parents were still being urged to institutionalize and force-feed children with such a condition.
