Young anorexic woman is murdered in family tragedy

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Category: Culture and Media

Reflections on Tragic Death In Ireland

A young anorexic woman died in Ireland. Her mother was a psychiatrist. She drowned her daughter in the bath.

It's a tragic story of Gothic proportions going back who knows how many generations. The mother couldn't bear the daughter's anorexia. The daughter refused treatment. The mother had an eating disorder. The grandmother committed suicide.

The story in "This is London" stops there, but the human story has got to go on into how this tragedy affects countless people. The story has got to go back to the environmental and psychological roots of this family.

I'm haunted, as many people must be, by the horror, the extremity, the tragedy, the ignorance, the blindness, the waste and the ongoing and spreading suffering of this event.

Eating Disorders Go Deep

Eating disorders go deep into our souls. Personally I think that they go deep into the souls of the individual with the disorder and also deep into the soul of our society.

Something powerful in our current human condition is bringing up a terrible despair that eating disorders are making public. If we can a bring thorough recovery to people with eating disorders, and embrace effective ways of preventing anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and all the rest, I bellieve we will also be finding a deep cure for the problems in our society that spawn eating disorders.

I hope this sad and profound tragedy will spur people to look more deeply into both the psychological and cultural forces contributing to sustaining eating disorders in our midst.

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