Male Eating Disorders / Mr Porter
I wrote about male eating disorders for Mr Porter. Eating disorders are as complex and individual as the people who have them, but campaigner James Downs’ story illustrates, often graphically, the particular struggles shared by many men:
Mr James Downs avoided main roads on the walk to his high school because, in his mind, he was so ugly that any car driver who saw him would crash. He studied his appearance in every reflective surface he passed for so much as a solitary out-of-place hair. Eventually he couldn’t bring himself to enter school, so he’d walk around Cardiff all day and lie to his parents. Nearly a year went by before anybody noticed.
From a young age, Downs had exhibited “little signs” of a budding body consciousness – not wanting to take his top off or go swimming – that was exacerbated by early puberty and a difficult transition to high school. He was bullied for being bright, playing the violin, having long hair, wearing glasses. He started taking longer, hours, to get ready in the morning, to perform his washing rituals. “I had to have this sense of safety that came from my body being as acceptable as possible,” he says. Perhaps because he still did well academically, the school wasn’t that bothered by his absences and assumed he was bunking off out of arrogance.
When it all came out after an end-of-year parents’ evening, Downs went to his GP, then mental health services. Aged 14, he was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, body dysmorphia (classified among “obsessive-compulsive and related” disorders), depression and anxiety. Because he was bright, the professionals assumed he’d “get” the cognitive behavioural therapy that they prescribed and told him to stop his washing rituals and take down his mirrors. While from the outside he seemed to be doing well, inside he felt more depressed, even suicidal. “I thought, ‘How can I communicate this to them?’” he says. “There was a shift from my appearance generally, my hair and skin, to weight and shape.” Soon, as he began to dramatically lose weight, it became clear he wasn’t doing well from the outside.