'I just kept going': How an eating disorder spun out of control for a P.E.I. girl

The community mental health lead for children in Charlottetown hopes recent changes will mean the poor experience of a girl with an eating disorder just a few years ago won't be repeated.

Rachel MacKay is 18 now. Four years ago, what started as a desire to lose some weight got out of control.

"I started off with a very healthy diet, healthy eating, exercising, just to lose some weight, because I've always been overweight my whole life growing up," MacKay told Island Morning host Laura Chapin.

"Once I reached that goal weight, that number on the scale which I was so fixated on, that number wasn't good enough. And I just kept going and going."

As the illness progressed, a voice in her head telling her not to eat grew more and more controlling. She would cook food, but only smell it once it was done. She exercised obsessively. She began to have trouble focusing in school. Her hair started falling out.

One day she blacked out in gym class.

Calling for help

Then one day, over a bowl of ice cream with her parents, it all came out.

"I was too afraid to eat the ice cream that they had offered me," said MacKay.

"I broke down and I told them, like, 'I am afraid to eat this. I can't eat this. Something in my head is telling me I can't.'"

Her parents consulted with her pediatrician as well as a dietitian. The pediatrician referred her to a therapist at the province's Community Mental Health Services branch.

MacKay found the experience frustrating.

"When I got this help through therapy, it was no help at all. Actually, my only option was with a therapist who had never dealt with a young girl with an eating disorder," she said.

"I wasn't being treated for the eating disorder. I was being treated for all these other mental illnesses."

Eventually, MacKay's parents found an experienced therapist in private practice who was able to help their daughter.

Changes at Richmond Centre

Dr. Jacqueline Roche, a clinical psychologist, is the lead for the children's team in community mental health at the Richmond Centre in Charlottetown. One of her areas of extra training is eating disorders, and she said it was difficult to hear the details what MacKay went through.

"We were really saddened to hear about Rachel's experience," said Roche.

"It's never easy when we hear that someone has had a difficult or not-helpful experience."

Specialization in a specific diagnostic category is tricky for a small island like ours.— Dr. Jacqueline Roche

Roche took on the job at Richmond Centre two years ago. Since that time, she believes the team has been reorganized in such a way that an experience like MacKay's would be less likely.

"Specialization in a specific diagnostic category is tricky for a small island like ours," she said.

"In the two years since I've started, you know, we really kind of divide up the diagnostic categories. And each individual therapist has gone and focused their training and development in that particular area because, of course, we can't all be experts in all areas."

The Richmond Centre now has expertise on staff to treat eating disorders using several different approaches, she said.

Roche also noted the centre is set up to make it easy to sign up for treatment. No referrals are necessary, and even a teenager, if deemed to understand the treatment options, can walk in and ask for help without parental permission.

'A lifetime for me'

MacKay said she is doing much better now, but she knows food will remain an issue she will need to remain vigilant about for the rest of her life.

"This is going to be a lifetime for me. It's a lifetime for anyone.

"Once you fall into an eating disorder, yeah, you can become recovered, but you'll always have that little voice in the back of your head telling you, 'Oh, I don't know' — like, maybe you shouldn't have this," she said.

"I always have that voice, but now it's just a little bit quieter and I'm able to shut that voice up for a day."

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