Kate Carnell calls them her lost teenage years.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
She can't remember much of the years in which she battled the eating disorder anorexia, but the memories she has aren't happy ones.
"Year nine was doctors, hospitals, nausea, vomiting, not much school, and a family who walked on egg shells," the former ACT chief minister said on Monday.
The year before, she'd started to diet and over-exercise. Once a happy kid with loving parents, she became sullen, depressed and antisocial. She memorised calorie counts and made an art form of avoiding food.
"I thought that if I started to eat, I would lose control, and the thought of putting on weight again was absolutely petrifying," she said.
Despite being underweight, she thought she was fat and hated herself.
Her bewildered parents took her to doctors, naturopaths and Chinese medicine practitioners. She tried medication and meal replacements, but nothing seemed to work.
In year 10, things got worse, and a psychiatrist referred her to the adolescent unit at Sydney's Prince Henry hospital. As a 15-year-old, her parents made the agonising decision to send her from home in Brisbane to another city for treatment.
It was a "horrible" position for her parents to be in, Ms Carnell said on Monday. "But what choice did they have? They thought I was going to die."
In hospital, her condition got worse and her weight dropped to just 30 kilograms.
"I think I realised that I was never going to get home and I was never going to get my life back if I didn't do something," she said.
She started to put on weight, and after a few months, was allowed to go home.
She considers herself one of the lucky ones. "I lived," she said. "I got through without any serious long term problems."
But 40 years on, she says the experience for many people with eating disorders is little better than her own.
Ms Carnell, who now leads the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, shared her story as part of a push for greater federal investment in treatment for eating disorders.
Almost a million Australians suffered eating disorders last year, and more than 1900 died from their illnesses. Fewer than 30 per cent of people with eating disorders access treatment.
The Butterfly Foundation says an investment of $2.8 billion over 10 years would fund best practice treatment for all Australians with an eating disorder. On Monday it presented Health Minister Sussan Ley with commissioned research from Deloitte Access Economics which estimates this investment would deliver health, productivity and other benefits worth more than five times that amount.
Anyone needing support with body image or eating disorders is encouraged to contact the Butterfly Foundation National Eating Disorders Support line on 1800 33 4673.
