A tricky few days thanks to my C-PTSD...

I can only say that the C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Disorder) came on with a vengeance from sometime on the evening of the 23rd until early evening on Christmas Day itself. It was quite frightening as I have never felt like that before: raging PTSD symptoms on full pelt - the works. And I had no control over it. Well, that's not strictly true. I had a choice: either to hide under the duvet for 48 hours or emerge and 'do business as usual'. I chose the latter as I didn't want to spoil everyone else's Christmas and we were entertaining the family at our house.

A not so 'silent night' (or day). Woohoo, it's Ben's birthday!

It's Ben's 23rd birthday today. Before he developed anorexia back in 2009 this day was usually loud and noisy with the sound of umpteen boys laughing, yelling and generally messing around up in Ben's attic room. You see, Ben's birthday parties were legendary. Indeed so many friends were invited that his parties had to be held in two shifts - countless friends one day followed by countless other friends the next with a sleepover inbetween. Then, during the years of the eating disorder, the house fell silent - apart from the final birthday sleepover when his anorexia had begun to rage and we had Ben hurtling downstairs in the middle of the night screaming and weeping because something had upset him. The following day was subdued as the boys' parents collected them from our house. The contrast between emaciated eating disordered Ben and his normal friends was heart-breaking. His friends stopped coming to our house after that and Ben's birthdays were solitary affairs with just the family. I remember his 18th birthday being especially poignant as he told us how down and depressed he felt - to be 18 and have no friends to celebrate with...

Boys get eating disorders too, you know!!

Someone please hand me a megaphone because I want to yell out loud that MEN AND BOYS GET EATING DISORDERS AS WELL AS GIRLS AND WOMEN!!!!! Because, in this study that was pointed out to me this morning, it's all about women and eating disorders. Again. No mention that men and boys struggle with anorexia, bulimia, etc, too.

Surviving Christmas / The Holidays when your son or daughter has an eating disorder

Needless to say, the combination of Christmas / The Holidays / Hanukkah or whatever your festive celebration and an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia can be a nightmare. No, not 'can be'; it IS a nightmare. I know. I've been there, done it. I've watched my son starve himself in the run up to "all that food" and then meticulously check how much he ate on Christmas Day, counting calories to ensure he didn't 'overdo it'. I've watched him eat a little too much and then punish himself afterwards for being "greedy" and "binging". I've been on Serious Red Alert in the knowledge that the slightest thing could result in banging, crashing, yelling, moaning and slamming his head against the wall.

Dr Julie O'Toole, I want to shake your hand about the misuse of BMIs for diagnosing eating disorders

I am LOVING Dr Julie O'Toole's blog and, in this recent blog post, she echoes what I have said about BMIs being used as an indicator of the seriousness of an eating disorder both at diagnosis stage and throughout treatment. She gives a terrific example of how reliance on BMI charts could prove potentially dangerous when assessing certain adolescents, especially those whose pre-morbid BMIs were above the so-called 'norm' yet who ate healthily (i.e. they didn't overeat). The same could apply to young people who carry a lot of muscle e.g. many males. Say the individual then goes onto lose a substantial amount of weight very quickly (for whatever reason), begins to get hooked on the idea of continuing to lose weight and gets taken to see the GP or pediatrician. The GP calculates the patient's BMI and the only alarm bells that are ringing is that this patient's BMI is too high and they might need to lose weight. See why this could be dangerous? Especially if the patient is presenting with typical eating disorder symptoms?

Excellent advice on how to weigh an eating disordered child

Every week directly before our hourly CAMHS session Ben was weighed in an ante room. He was told his weight. It might have gone up slightly - or down. If it had gone up, even by a tiny amount, the entire CAMHS session would be hi-jacked by panic and anxiety that his weight was ballooning out of control and that we were "making him fat". Worse, that his weight would continue going up and up without ever stopping and he might explode, Mr Creosote style. As a result he would spend the following week making adjustments to ensure that the needle was pointing in the 'right' direction at the next scales session.

Does anyone out there still believe that parents cause eating disorders?

If so, I would like to direct them to this superb article by Julie O'Toole, MD - Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Kartini Clinic for Children and Families, which sets out the rock-solid scientific evidence for eating disorders being brain disorders and that "parents are part of the therapeutic solution, not the source of the problem". For Dr O'Toole, the "take-home message that biology sends us is that not only do parents not cause eating disorders, schizophrenia, autism, and other brain disorders, they couldn’t cause them if they wanted to".