Re: Re: New here- 11 year old DD diagnosed with OCD and Anorexia

[Guest guest]

My daughter has a lot of fears regarding food, mainly that it might cause her to

be ill or die due to food poisoning.  Because of this, when I took her for a

consult at the NYU Child Study Center by their specialist in OCD and tics, she

recommended that we not wait to long to start medication for OCD if the CBT

wasn't effective enough.  Her OCD was so off the charts that the therapist I

took her to agreed she should start on medication.  

As far as your other comment about not telling parents to back off, you are so

correct!  A fellow special ed teacher at the school district where I used to

work slowly wasted away due to anorexia.  It was horrific to see it happening

and even to look at her because of what she looked like towards the end. When

she didn't show up for school one day, they found her collapsed on her kitchen

floor and she died shortly thereafter.  The school district was concerned about

her teaching kids while she looked like she was next to death's door, but her

parents threatened to sue if she wasn't allowed to continue.  Truthfully, her

parents should have been more focused on the anorexia rather than on her

continued denial.  Her unnecessary death was a terrible, terrible tragedy..

Re: New here- 11 year old DD diagnosed with OCD and

Anorexia

Hi ,

My daughter developed an eating disorder related to her OCD. It

started when she was 12 (now 16 and much better). B/c she was thin to

start it became dangerous. She was never diagnosed with classic

anorexia because her eating had rituals to keep it safe that were

unrelated to calories or weight gain (it seemed to evolve from a

severe viral stomach bug). Still the effect was dramatic and she

ended up hospitalized locally (then discharged with no help for the

problem b/c it was not " anorexia " according to DSM, since when her

ritual was accomodated she would eat well- so we had no " code " to

keep her there per insurance). After many emgcy rooms visits, many

attempts at therapy, an extremely traumatic psych hold that was

initiated against our will (and made things exponentially worse), she

finally she spent 4 mo at UCLA which probably saved her life. They

have a non-negotiable minutely supervised eating protocol that puts

the weight back on in an emgcy, then (after weight begins to be

restored) help to figure out how to approach the problem

therapeutically.

One problem we had in getting help is that it was not " anorexic "

calorie restriction according to body image ideas etc, but

superstitious fears relatad to OCD, so (pre-UCLA) therapy attempts

were very imprecise, if not making things worse. I learned that alot

of kids in fact20have non-classic " anorexia " and that therapists who

can work on both fronts (OCD and anorexia) would be helpful. But

since your d does seem to to be be thinking alot about calories maybe

this does not quite apply.

Another thing I learned is that doctors or therapists who tell you to

back off when your child is not eating may be putting that child in

danger. It is not really something you can hope will correct itself

once it gets out of hand, plus the loss of nutrition and calories can

affect the brain and make pre-existing OCD behaviors snowball by

increasing rigidity and lack of insight.

A site you could check out is the Maudsley Parents message board,

parents share experiences re eating disorders and practial help about

increasing calories, diet strategies, therapy, and how to keep their

child eating. I think their hope (at that site) is that parents who

can be proactive early on with a child's eating disorder can maybe

offset a spiral down into a medically dangerous situation.

nancy grace

>

> Hi there. My name is and I joined about 2 weeks ago. I have

> been reading the posts and have gotten some good information. It's

> nice to know that I am not the only one going through this, but

wish

> that none of us had to.

>

> Just a little hx of my daughter. My daughter is one of those

kids

> that is a perfectionist and sees things as very black and white.

When

> she was in preschool she was worried that her teacher was going to

> jail because she had a kid and was not married.

>

> I did not notice the OCD for what it was for quite a few years. In

> First grade she started not wanting to ride the bus. She would

freak

> out and refused to get on it. She did fine at school once she was

> there but I guess looking back she was worrying about what could

> happen. Mostly now she tells me her fears were about something

> happening to me while she was at school.

>

> Other signs that I still did not pick up on were that she would be

in

> a class such as gymnastics, doing fine, nothing going wrong, but

all

> of a sudden out of nowhere she would not want to go and have a

> complete panic attack. To the best of my knowledge I believe this

> happened when she felt that she was not the best in the class. When

> she was in a class where the majority of the kids were younger she

> did fine- but when there was varing levels of skill and she was not

> in the higher skilled end she would feel anxiety.

>

> She has always been a people pleaser.

>

> About four years ago on a summer retreat with my church worship

group

> my son who was about 5 at the time, got sick and threw up on his

> sleeping=2

0bag. For over a year my daughter would not get anywhere

near

> that sleeping bag. It was contaminated in her mind, even after it

had

> been washed several times, she was certain she would get sick from

> it. That winter her hands were chapped and since it was winter I

> assumed that it was from the wind and cold weather. But one day she

> was taking a shower and I asked her why she was taking another

shower

> because she had showered earlier that day. She said she was afraid

of

> getting sick. That is when it clicked on about her hands and she

> admitted that she was washing compulsively.

>

> We started seeing a counselor and by the end of the year she seemed

> to be fine for the most part. She was doing well for awhile and

then

> was in a car accident with her grandparents (my inlaws)- it was not

> too bad but it caused a lot of mental trauma for my daughter and

she

> went into other ocd behaviors and fears and still to this day does

> not want to be alone with the inlaws because she is afraid

something

> bad will happen. Her grandparents would never intentionally hurt

her,

> but they do have poor judgement and my MIL says things that are

> inappropriate to say to a child and things that make my daughter

> stressful. That is another story but for example, after my daughter

> returned from a trip out of state to visit my

parents, my MIL asked

> my daughter if she had a good time with her Nana and when Kaitlyn

> said Yes, she said something to the effect of " Well i guess you

don't

> like it here in the country anymore " . Just things that make my

> daughter feel guilty.

>

> She started seeing the counselor again to deal with the car

accident

> anxiety. Fear of travelling a certain distance from home. etc. then

> and that was the summer before 3rd grade. During the school year

> another thing that happened is she started to beg to be

homeschooled.

> I would ask if anything happened at school that I should know

about.

> The answer would always be no. She was doing fine with school

(always

> has been a good student)- had friends. etc. When I would tell her

> teacher she had anxiety they could not believe it. She would hide

it

> well at school and it would come out at home. She would do well

> during the week and during the weekend she would get more and more

> upset about returning to school on Monday. Finally in April I

agreed

> to homeschool. So, I pulled both kids out of school and started to

> homeschool. In September I put my son back in school and Kaitlyn

was

> still getting counseling from the accident. Around February she was

> starting to say she really did want to go back to school in Jr High-

> but I said that if she went to=2

0public school for 6th- then she

should

> go to 5th grade and then because I was dealing with depression of

my

> own, and felt we werent doing enough schooling we both decided that

> she would go back to school. So, she entered into the 4th grade and

> now is in the 5th and as far as school is concerned she loves it

and

> does not really have any anxietys about school. She stopped seeing

> the counselor by the end of the school year.

>

> Then this last summer towards the end of summer I noticed that she

> was exercising a lot. She is a very thin girl and never has had a

> weight problem. I was noticing that she was being compulsive about

> it. She had to walk a certain amount of times around the cul-de-

sac,

> lift a certain amount of reps of weights,etc. School started and

she

> continued this routine. I did not notice that she was eating so

very

> little and really did not notice a sudden weight loss. I was

> concerned with the obsessive nature of the exercise. I told her it

> was fine to exercise but when she felt that she HAD to do it no

> matter what, then that was a problem. One day I came in the kitchen

> when she was making her lunch and saw that she was only packing 1/2

a

> sandwich and putting a trace amount of peanut butter on it and that

> was her whole lunch.

>

> I scheduled a physical for her in20November and she brought a list

of

> questions for the doctors. The list went something like this. " what

> is a calorie? " " Do I burn calories when I am sitting? " , " what is

the

> difference between a fat calorie and a regular calorie? " etc. This

> combined with my daughters weight 63.5 pounds for an 11 year old

girl

> who is 4ft 9 " the doctor told her she was concerned that she may be

> starting to be anorexic. She explained this to my daughter. Gave

her

> some guidelines to follow and asked to see us again in two weeks.

My

> daughter came back in with a weight loss bringing her down to close

> to 62 pounds. The doctor officially diagnosed the anorexia and we

> discussed the OCD behaviors. My daughter had to be back in another

> week. Had a small gain, another week had a small loss. Last

> appointment, 2 weeks ago the doctor decided to start her on prozac-

> (very small dose)- since the OCD symptoms seemed to be getting

worse.

> My daughter told the doctor that she noticed that if she kicked her

> leg once, then she would need to kick it 10 more times or she felt

> something bad would happen. The same thing with shutting cubboards.

>

> We went back in for a visit after 2 weeks on the meds and she did

> have a little over 2 pound gain, but it is still like pulling teeth

> to get her to eat, and she is getting too many of her calo

ries from

> sucking candies, treats, etc. She says her OCD is better though and

> does not feel compelled to do any of the compulsive behaviors that

> she was doing. She is still focused on calories though.

>

> My husband recently got laid off and we are now on state insurance

> and it was hard finding someone in the mental health field to see

> her, but we do finally now have an appointment for monday so I am

> hoping that the counseling in addition to the medication will help

> her with some coping mechanisms. I have also ordered a book that

was

> recommended on this board and have talked to her about naming her

OCD

> and she seems to like that idea.

>

> I am curious if anyone else here is dealing with an eating disorder

> in addition to the OCD.

>

> I am also curious about the heredity link with other mental

illnesses

> and OCD. I ask this because a few people have mentioned their own

> illnesses and I take medication for anxiety/depression and my mom

was

> Bi-polar (she is passed away) and my husbands Dad is.

>

> I know this is a long post. Thanks for hanging in there. Looking

> forward to " meeting " more of you. Thanks for the support.

>

>

>