Through Thick and Thin

By Lauren Russell

Four years ago, before coming to Santa Clara, senior Nicci Schellinger was in the hospital with a stomach the size of half a walnut and her pulse beating 22 times a minute compared to the healthy 60 to 80 times, all as a result of anorexia.

Schellinger recalls how her friends watched her starve herself every day, and how their frustration with her problem led to anger rather than an intervention.

"They watched me eat lunch every day together, and if anyone saw me doing what I did, they would know," Schellinger said. "They would get mad at me and talked about me a lot behind my back to one another, but they never approached me about it."

While on-campus health experts say that Santa Clara has relatively few problems with eating disorders compared to other campuses, it is seen as a school that emphasizes appearance and a lifestyle that is focused on image, and support from friends is crucial to recovery.

In the past week alone, six students visited the office of Health Educator Laurie Lang to discuss friends' eating disorders. While the Counseling Center, Cowell Student Health Center and Lang can help these people individually, she hopes that a program will be available for students who want to help their friends in the near future.

"I think that's the hardest thing for friends, because they constantly see them and they don't seem to be making any progress," Lang said.

Schellinger agrees and is concerned that this is a silent epidemic without enough support.

"The biggest issue at hand is it seems like everyday so many girls are concerned with the way they look, and it's so common to hear 'I feel fat' or 'I'm on a diet,' or 'I'm just going to eat a salad for lunch," Schellinger said. "But knowing when we need to pursue help for that person is such a great line that no one knows is there, cause no one knows when we need to pursue help, and people don't get help."

Dr. Lauren Salaices of Cowell also said that many students have come to her worried about friends with eating problems. But fearing confrontation and its consequences, she said that many friends don't know how to appropriately deal with the situation and need guidance.

"Oftentimes they're the people who are really going to get somebody help," Salaices said of friends as a support system.

Santa Clara Admissions Counselor Alistair Grant also suffered from an eating disorder his freshman year in college in which he exercised and worked off all the calories that he had eaten.

"I didn't know who I was," Grant said. "My lifestyle, it's not what I wanted it to be. It was what friends wanted me to do. It was just too mechanical. I was whoever anyone wanted me to be."

Grant's friends deserted him as his problem developed, leaving him to find friends that helped him to feel good about himself.

HOW TO HELP

Dr. Marie Herbert of the Counseling Center often sees friends of students with eating disorders for advice rather than the individual with the problem. Her first advice is that it's better to do something than to do nothing.

"Typically, there's mounting discussion behind people's backs and surveillance of what they're eating," Herbert said. "It's probably not helpful to just observe and not do anything"

Even if the person with the suspected problem may deny it, or if a confrontation may cause tension in the household, Herbert says it's better to talk about it than to avoid it.

"It should not be an accusing discussion claiming, 'You have a problem, you need help,'" she said.

Instead, she advises students to express concern, tell their friends that they are worried about them, that they seem sad, or haven't been themselves, and ask how they can help.

Schellinger agrees.

"What they could've done so much more was to say 'I'm concerned about you, it seems to me you're not as happy as you used to be,'" Schellinger said about her friends in high school. "It's more 'how are you' than 'what have you been eating.'"

But support doesn't always mean the problem goes away quickly. Students want a quick fix to the problem and it really takes time, according to Lang.

"It took time to get in that situation, and it takes time to resolve it," she said. "Do not expect change. Do expect them to say I don't have a problem, you're the one with the problem. Do expect them to be nervous in the beginning, but tell them the places on campus you can go. Be there, be supportive, let them know you're there to listen."

KNOWING THE SIGNS

A random survey of 16,000 students from 35 colleges nationwide taken in 2000 by the National College Health Assessment (NCHA) found that 38 percent of males and 64 percent of females at Santa Clara exercised to lose weight.

"I think certainly on this campus, my interpretation is, certainly from seeing the number of students that work out and use the Malley center, that there is an emphasis on how one looks and one's weight," said Laurie Lang, a Health Educator in Malley.

The NCHA survey included 400 Santa Clara students, of which Lang found that 15 percent of males and 31 percent of females at Santa Clara also diet to lose weight.

While Salaices said that the majority of Santa Clara students have healthy eating habits, she estimates that about 10 percent to 20 percent of females have disordered eating, such as occasional purging or restrictive eating.

But it's the restrictive eating that can spiral down to something much worse. Schellinger found herself restricting fat, then calories, and from then on to the point where she couldn't find the strength to carry her books in school and often blacked out while driving.

Schellinger remembers when her friend Sean finally brought up her eating disorder to her parents. She told him she hated him and that it was the worst thing he could've done. But to him, if she hated him and was alive, it was a lot better than her loving him but dying.

"People don't understand the reality of an eating disorder, that you can die, and you can die within a couple months of it and also do long-term health damage to your heart and your brain," Schellinger said.

The possibility of death was a surprising reality to Grant as well.

"I don't think people who have anorexia know that death is a part of it," Grant said. "I didn't. I never thought about death when I was killing myself. Cause it's so slow and it seems so right. It almost seems like your only course of action."

At the worst of her sickness, Schellinger actually had proteins from her brain found in her urine from the damage that had been done to her body.

"Our cultures let it go so far that it's just become an invisible epidemic that every girl is supposed to be concerned with the way they look and can't even decipher if they're just going through a fad right now," said Schellinger.

Support through counseling and nutritionists can help a great deal, but a friend's repetitive concern will sink in one day to the person suffering.

"True friends are those who will say, 'I will take your hand and help you through this,'" Grant said.

Even after recovering from her disorder, Schellinger still finds support from friends important.

"Finding that support group and just having that is a key player," she said. "Even if it's just one person."

To address the role of friends in a student's recovery from an eating disorder, Stephanie Watt, a parent of a child who died at the age of 14 from anorexia, will be coming to Mayer Theatre May 2 at 7 p.m.