Status of Women committee  I think that's a really loaded question. To answer the first part of your question, if you can't afford therapy and there's nowhere for you to go, you get sicker. I think Lisa raised a really good point in that you have to have early intervention, and it's during that time when

Status of Women committee  Part of it was I was diagnosed with the anxiety and the depression very early on, probably when I was around 15. The medications weren't coupled with any sort of therapy. They kept trying me on different medications because it wasn't working. The medications weren't making me eat

Status of Women committee  That's a good question. The situation is slightly better. We have another four beds since the time I was in treatment. We have a Credit Valley program now. But I have lots of clients who have been on waiting lists for months and months and who are very near being hospitalized.

Status of Women committee  I would. I have two clients who I'm working with right now who are paying thousands of dollars a day to go to the States, because we have nothing here.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, yes.

Status of Women committee  I personally think the other part of it is that it's an illness that is seemingly about food, which most people don't even think about. That makes the general population think that it's very simple. I often think that if people found out that I went to rehab for a drug addiction

Status of Women committee  Who would you like to answer that?

Status of Women committee  It's both. It's very much both. We know there are predisposing factors in terms of genetics and biology if there's anxiety, but we also know that when the brain is starved, it's very difficult to have cognition and to even be able to have therapy when you're that underweight. The

Status of Women committee  It can be. Not necessarily but sometimes would be the answer. I think what we know is that certain personality types may be more predisposed. If you're an anxious child, or if you have a lot of worry in your family, or as Lisa mentioned, any sort of mental illness in itself, we

Status of Women committee  I wish I could say yes. I think the work that we've done through NIED in the last two years has been pretty incredible. One of the biggest doctors in the field, Dr. Woodside, said that he'd seen more change in the last year than in the last 30. That's positive in terms of bringin

Status of Women committee  I think our treatment here is very black and white. The treatment here for eating disorders hasn't changed in the last 20 years. If you're not able to comply completely, you're not given any chances. There are very strict criteria in terms of how much weight you have to gain. I'm

Status of Women committee  That's a really good question. I know that for myself in particular, I practise out of Burlington and people travel hours and hours to get to me. I don't know how many exactly specialize in this field, to be honest, but I think that in my small city of Burlington, there are only

Status of Women committee  First and foremost, eating disorders don't exist in a vacuum, so generally speaking there's always going to be.... It's an anxiety-based illness, so there's anxiety, depression. There's a very high level of comorbidity that is happening. To answer your question in terms of chall

Status of Women committee  The question is, how long after I was diagnosed was I in the hospital?

Status of Women committee  No. I'll clarify that, absolutely. Looking back now, I can see that my eating disorder started when I was probably about 15. Nobody started talking about it until my very late teens, early twenties.