The complexities and complications of eating disorders served as the central topic for a panel of five people who have all been affected by the diseases in different ways.

Members of the panel spoke Tuesday in front of a packed Goldstien Auditorium crowd made up of sorority chapters. The event was sponsored by the Panhellenic Council.

The speakers included Susan Pasco, a staff therapist at Syracuse University; Julia Salomon, a dietitian for SU’s food services and health education department; Dr. Robert Kleinhaus, an internist who has experience with the topic; Mary Ellen Clausen, who has two daughters that suffer from eating disorders and Rebecca Walker, a graduate student at SU who is currently suffering from anorexia nervosa.

The speakers were introduced by Panhel President Naomi Weinberg.

All of the speakers reinforced that eating disorders are dangerously stereotyped into being an easy-to-cure problem or one that only affects certain populations for certain reasons. This is something that cannot continue, said Salomon.

‘It is time to start talking accurately and responsibly about eating disorders,’ she said. ‘The cartoons in The D.O. are not accurate descriptions.’

As a dietitian, Salomon said she works with people suffering from these disorders, although weight gain is many times a poor indicator of recovery. Because eating healthy is only a small part of the puzzle to having success, she warns against coming to someone like her before seeing a therapist to deal with the psychological aspects.

A victim’s family plays another important role in dealing with these problems, something that Clausen said she knows well.

‘I am just a mom,’ she said. ‘But sometimes an eating disorder overtakes a whole family.’

Clausen said her first daughter began her descent shortly after her first year of college, when she went from taking six laxatives a day to purge food, to 30. Since that time she has turned to drug and alcohol abuse, dropped out of college, lived in her car for an extended period of time and attempted to commit suicide ‘more times than I can remember,’ she added.

‘She is not on the 12-step program,’ Clausen added. ‘She is on the 24-step program.’

Meanwhile, as Clausen said she was making trips between Syracuse and Philadelphia, where her first daughter was living at the time, her second daughter was beginning her own battle with anorexia, at one time dropping down to 85 pounds, forcing Clausen to send her to a four-month rehabilitation clinic, she said.

‘I just wanted to kiss her boo boos and make it better but I couldn’t,’ Clausen said.

This struggle is nothing new to Walker, who was speaking publicly about her condition for the first time. Walker said that anorexia jeopardized her college career several times, along with locking her in a bitter fight with her insurance company about payment for treatment. Her condition at one time was at a point where she could not be released from a clinic because of her failure to pass a simple test meant to measure mental capacity, she said.

‘A master’s in economics is of little use when you can’t do a simple subtraction or memory recall test,’ she said.

Bailey Wasserman, a freshman speech communications major and Delta Delta Delta sister, said that hearing so many views on such an important issue was interesting.

‘Everyone could relate to at least one of the speakers,’ Wasserman said.

Through all the compassion, however, the reality of the disorders was never underscored. Kleinhaus pointed out that because vomiting depletes the body’s potassium resources, it poses very serious health risks.

‘Lethal injections is done with a shot of potassium,’ he said. ‘The opposite can kill you too.’

Published on March 26, 2002 at 12:00 pm