Anorexia Research

As I created a side story for one of my characters, Cassie, I needed to do some research into the illness that Cassie is beginning to have. Cassie is suffering with the illness anorexia but her 2 best friends, Maisy and Gemma do not know and neither do her family as she is keeping it so secret.

I got the following research from the NHS website so it is accurate and scientific in every aspect.

Symptoms:

• Eating as little as possible
• Making yourself vomit
• Over excerising- burning more calories than you consume in a day. 

The need to obsessively burn calories usually draws people with anorexia to high impact activities, such as running, dancing or aerobics. Some people will use any available opportunity to burn calories, such as preferring to stand than sit as it burns more calories. 

I will use this information with Cassie and make her standing and never sitting, so this will be a subtle hint to the audience that many not even pick up on. 

Warning signs in others:

• Losing weight
• Missing meals
• Complaining about being fat, even though they are normal or underweight.
• Repeatedly weighing themselves and looking in the mirror.
• Saying they have already eaten.
• Only eaten certain low calorie foods in your prescence.
• Feeling uncomfortable or refusing to eat in public places. 

I will incorporate some of this points into Cassie's character, especially the feeling uncomfortable eating in public places. There is also a scene where Cassie inspects herself in the mirror for a while which will show her low self esteem.  

OCD and Anorexia

Like in most real life cases, Cassie has OCD along with her anorexia. This is very common as the illness's come hand in hand. This is what I found out about it:

-Individual repeatedly checks refrigerator, shelves or other parts of the house, in order to make sure that every piece of food brought in is in its proper designated place. 

I have used this information to create a trait that Cassie has in which she has drawer under her bed filled withe chocolate and crisps all nicely set out in a neat and proper order. She spends hours sorting this food and making sure everything is in the right place. This is her way of not eating by distracting herself with this job. 

This is a blog I found of a suffer of both OCD and anorexia which I think will come in handy when writing for Cassie as it shows their unique way of thinking:

http://andthenshedisappeared.blogspot.co.uk