Matt Wetsel is a healthy-looking 22 year old, standing
tall and lean with wispy blond hair and a short, cropped beard.
Looking at him, one might never guess he struggled for two years with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder characterized by self-starvation and significant weight loss.
“I’m kind of the antithesis of the person stereotypically
you would expect to get an eating disorder,” said Wetsel, a fifth-year student double majoring in psychology and religious studies. “I’m not female. I’m not gay. I’m not a wrestler. I’m not an athlete.”
As someone who does not fit the poster-child image
of an eating disorder sufferer, Wetsel said he was inspired to found and become president of Students for the Elimination of Eating Disorders, a new campus organization.
The group’s top priority, Wetsel said, is to communicate
to students battling eating disorders that they should not feel compelled to hide their conditions.”It’s nothing to be ashamed of, plain and simple,” he said.
As is the case with many people who develop an eating disorder, Wetsel said, his experience with anorexia derived from a combination of psychological and emotional issues – not necessarily a worry about his weight.
“Coming out of high school, a lot of things went wrong in my life, and I became very depressed and lost my appetite,” Wetsel said. “(I) couldn’t sleep and started losing weight. Before I knew it, I had lost a lot of weight.”
Throughout his freshman and sophomore years at VCU, he said, it became a game to see how much weight he could lose. The negative consequences of his decisions, however, caught up with him eventually.
“I hurt a lot of friendships, (and) I destroyed my GPA, all in the name of starvation,” Wetsel said. “I was at war with my body, and I didn’t know why.”
The first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States, which appeared in the February 2007 edition of Biological Psychiatry, found approximately 9 million Americans have one or more eating disorders.
The survey of 9,282 English-speaking adults ages 18 and older discovered binge eating disorder, which is characterized by recurrent overeating without compensatory measures to counter the eating, is the most common disorder among men and women. Bulimia nervosa, which is characterized by a cycle of overeating and compensatory measures to counter the eating, such as self-induced vomiting,
is the second most common disorder among men and women.
Katie Vatalaro Hill, assistant director of the Office of Health Promotion,
said eating disorders at VCU reflect national trends.
Every year for the past several years, the Office of Health Promotion has administered a random representative survey of undergraduates measuring their health behaviors. In the last survey, conducted this past spring, between 7 percent and 10 percent of the 1,000 students surveyed reported they struggle with some kind of disordered eating problem that does not fit the clinical description of an eating disorder.
Between 1 percent and 5 percent of respondents reported being bulimic, and about 1 percent reported being anorexic. The survey did not address binge eating.
“The percentages seem small, but they’re such severe issues that we think they’re important,” said Vatalaro Hill.
Elizabeth Bochicchio, vice president of Students for the Elimination of Eating Disorders, urges students with eating disorders to seek treatment.
“Recovery is possible. I’ve been through it myself,” said 20-year-old Bochicchio, who has received outpatient therapy for her eating disorders. “It’s a hard, long road. It’s not easy, but it is possible.”
Treatment options range from inpatient care at a hospital or other facility when an eating disorder might be life-threatening, to outpatient individual or group therapy, like the kind Bochicchio has undergone.
At VCU, Vatalaro Hill, in her capacity as nutrition services coordinator at the Office of Health Promotion, meets one on one with students to develop a healthy eating plan tailored to a student’s needs.
Counselors at University Counseling Services also offer therapy services to students having a difficult time coping with the emotional or psychological dimensions of their eating disorders.
Despite the variety of treatment choices that exist, however, most eating disorders go undiagnosed and untreated, according to the national survey published earlier this year. One of the reasons for this is that many insurance companies deny or impose restrictions on care for mental health problems.
Wetsel said Students for the Elimination of Eating Disorders is dedicated to seeing that eating disorders have parity with other health issues. The organization plans to lobby for more insurance recognition of eating disorders and other reforms in February during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, the largest annual eating disorders awareness and educational outreach effort in the United States.
If eating disorders are ever to be eliminated, Wetsel said, society must understand that recovery is a gradual process, as it is with most mental health conditions.
“I see recovery as the ability to consistently make healthy decisions, to know yourself and to not be afraid of making healthy decisions,” he said.
Wetsel, who wants to conduct clinical work on eating disorders after graduation, said his catharsis came when he discussed his disorder with his parents.
“When I finally talked to them about it, I was like, ‘Who am I keeping this from? What is there to hide?'” he said. “Now that I was being honest with people, so much of my anxiety went away.
“It was like the weight of the world came off my shoulders.”