Pro-anorexia movement has cult-like appeal

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Treatment often fails
Dr. Mae Sokol often treats young patients in her Omaha, Neb., practice who personify their eating disorder beyond just Ana. To them, bulimia is “Mia.” And an eating disorder often becomes “Ed.”

“A lot of times they’re lonely and they don’t have a lot of friends. So Ana or Mia become their friend. Or Ed becomes their boyfriend,” says Sokol, who is director of the eating disorders program run by Children’s Hospital and Creighton University.

In the end, treatment can include writing “goodbye” letters to Ana, Mia and Ed in order to gain control over them.

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But it often takes a long time to get to that point — and experts agree that, until someone with an eating disorder wants to help themselves, treatment often fails.

Tarlow, at the Renfrew Center, says it’s also easy for patients to fall back into the online world of Ana after they leave treatment. “Unfortunately,” she says, “with all people who are in recovery, it’s so much about who you surround yourself with.”

Some patients, including Brixius, the 19-year-old South Dakotan, have had trouble finding counselors who truly understand their struggle with Ana.

“I’d tell them about Ana and how she’s a real person to me. And they’d just look at me like I’m nuts,” Brixius says of the counselors she’s seen at college and in her hometown. “They wouldn’t address her ever again, so it got very frustrating.

“Half the time I’m, like, ’You know what? I give up.”’

Other days, she’s more hopeful.

“I gotta snap out of this eventually if I want to have kids and get a job. One day, I’ll get to that point,” she says, pausing. “But I’ll always obsess about food.”

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