Eating distress, another term for eating disorders, is perceived as a woman's issue. Yet men also suffer from the condition. They also cope with having spouses, partners and girlfriends with various forms of eating distress, such as self-starvation, overeating, purging , laxative abuse and associated problems of self-mutiliation, attempted suicide and drug or alcohol abuse.
According to the eating distress awareness survey, 94.5 per cent of people know someone with an eating disorder, or suffer from the disorder themselves (6 per cent).
One in three people - 30.5 per cent - have a spouse, partner, girlfriend/boyfriend, parent, sibling or other relative with the condition.
"Michael", a psychology student in university, describes his girlfriend, "Susan", also a student, as "an angel". He says: "she should have been dead years ago, she made so many suicide attempts. She's the love of my life and she will fully recover, we will marry and we will have children and live like a normal family."
Susan has suffered from eating distress for 10 years. "She is so beautiful, but she hates herself. She stands in front of the mirror and says 'I'm a fat bitch'. My job is to keep saying, 'no, you're not'."
Susan still counts calories and feels bad after eating, but Michael is delighted that she will at least eat in front of him, which she won't do in front of anyone else. When she eats and complains of the feeling of having food in her stomach, he just says, "don't worry, you'll feel better in an hour."
Michael has had his own struggles with "self-hatred" and "self-destruction". Labelled "anorexic" at the age of 15, he was called a "faggot" by his brothers. So he started eating a lot, but to smother his pain he began abusing alcohol. When one of his brothers committed suicide, Michael's "world fell apart". To dampen the agony he felt, he used ecstasy and cocaine, and smoked heroin to "come down". After a year of counselling, he stopped using drugs and realised that his drug and alcohol abuse were rooted in a "negative self-image" When he met Susan, he fell in love with her at first sight because she was "timid and quiet". Michael says: "I wanted to bring her out of herself and give her support. It's a daily struggle. Sometimes she'll go into trances with the storm in her mind. I just try to support her and understand her."
A new men's helpline for eating distress is being run by Gary, a recovered sufferer of eating distress. "Eating distress is not a woman's thing," he says.
Gary was in an orphanage for a while at the age of nine, when he would drink 34 cups of tea at a go as a way of filling up his stomach and burying his pain. Back with his family, he would gorge on food, then stop eating. As an 11-year-old, he felt overwhelmed by life and stole his mother's slimming tablets. He also had a sister with anorexia.
Like Michael, Gary tried to anaesthetise his anxieties about eating by engaging in extreme behaviours: abusing alcohol, behaving aggressively and overdoing workouts in the gym. The behaviours became replacements for the food problems. Gary says: "Eating distress is the symptom of a negative mindset, hypersensitivity and an inability to deal with emotions. You're using food as a release. Your body is only an outer shell, but in eating distress you focus on the outer shell, as if controlling it will solve your problems. I felt ashamed of my own behaviour."
With counselling, Gary gradually learned that it was OK not to be perfect. When he relaxed and stopped judging himself harshly, he overcame his aggression and stopped abusing alcohol. He started eating more, and drinking less. "I've learned to be gentle with myself and I have a balanced life," he says. Gary will be one of the men staffing the new helpline.
Men's Eating Distress Helpline: first Tuesday of every month starting November 6th, 6-8 p.m. 01-8333063. Michael and Susan's names have been changed.
Susan has a website: edrecovery.freeservers.com