Shortly after her eighth birthday, Dana's eating habits changed. At first she ate a bit less. Then she gave up sweets and then junk food. But soon she was eating so little that her parents had her admitted to a paediatric ward. There, she stopped eating completely and had to be fed through an IV drip. To prevent the glucose entering her body she held her arm up for six hours.
'I wanted to lose weight. I just stopped eating' says Dana now. 'At the moment, then, I wanted to die.'
After a little progress in hospital, Dana was allowed home again. But she continued to restrict her food intake to 175 calories-a-day and exercised compulsively. Soon she had lost a quarter of her body weight.
In desperation, her parents decide to enrol her on a 12-week residential treatment programme at Rhodes Farm Clinic. But how will she cope, away from her family, as the youngest of 20 girls with eating disorders?
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