ABSTRACT
Joanne, aged eleven, was small for her age, dark haired and loved writing stories. Her sisters, one younger and one older, were both blonde and quite tall for their age. Recently Joanne had lost weight and had become obviously thin. Yet Joanne was convinced that she was fat and no amount of reassurance by her parents made any difference. She was absolutely certain that she was fat, useless and ugly. Anna, fifteen, had seemed to be a perfectly happy and normal girl with no obvious problems. She appeared settled at school and had never been the sort of child who
complained or made a fuss about things. Her parents were glad that they hadn’t had the sort of problems with their daughter that they knew other parents had with teenagers. Anna’s Mum and Dad realized something might be wrong during the summer holidays. They had been shocked to see Anna in her swimsuit. She had obviously lost a considerable amount of weight without them having noticed it before. Her parents thought it strange that neither of them had been aware that Anna had even been on a diet or had become particularly fussy about her food. They began to worry that she may have some serious illness or medical condition that was causing her to waste away. However, thinking about this further, her mother recalled that over the last couple of months Anna had taken to going to the bathroom immediately after every meal. She realized with shock and disbelief that Anna must have been making herself sick without anybody noticing.
