Solitude to Solidarity on mental health

Media Credit: MEGAN SLACK Alexis Chappell (in white) talks with members of Active Minds, a new club to promote mental health awareness.

Alexis Chappell was alone. At 16, after moving across the country, to Paris after her parents' divorce, and back again to the States, the current AU junior found herself in boarding school in Tennessee. It was a foreign place for her, not where she belonged, and certainly not a place where people would understand her...

Chappell was unhappy and out of control. Trapped in isolating depression and unable to reach out, she turned to food as a way to cope. She began restricting calories and dropping weight, and her dysfunctional coping mechanism developed into a full-blown eating disorder.

"Feeling out of control with my life really started my anorexia," Chappell said. "It was something that I could control; it was mine and no one could touch it."

Chappell's anorexia was so severe she was hospitalized for more than a week. Doctors told her she could die if she continued starving herself. Anorexics, by definition, drastically restrict their food intake in order to loose weight, and generally have a distorted body image and little concept of their size, even though they may be drastically underweight.

Eating disorder behaviors are only symptoms of other emotional problems that have nothing to do with food or weight, Chappell said. As she began treatment, she realized how little was known about the underlying causes of eating disorders, or even how to treat them.

"People think, 'well, you're not fat, why don't you just eat.' But for me the restriction of my food was just a symptom of my greater depression; it wasn't about that I thought I shouldn't be above this weight or below that weight," Chappell said. "Food is not the issue, the issue is the fact that I wanted to die. Restricting food was the way I knew how to do it."

Once she was discharged from the hospital, Chappell said she had a hard time readjusting to a healthy diet. The unexpected death of her father just a few days after her release added to the challenge. When she finally returned to school, she began to realize what a problem it was that no one talked about things like eating disorders or depression, or any other mental illness.

"After I was hospitalized, when I came back to school, no one said anything," she said. "It was just kind of, 'Oh, she's back, let's not talk about where she went or what she was doing.' But I think we need to stop glossing over everything, and realize mental illness happens to more people that we think."

Continued...

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