Elena Vanishing

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness (including psychosis), disordered eating (anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa), and self-harm.

Anorexia nervosa is a psychological disorder characterized by a refusal to consume enough nutrition to sustain the body. People with anorexia often do not realize the severity of their disorder, even when it threatens their lives. As a result, anorexia is the leading cause of death among psychiatric conditions (not including substance use disorder). Anorexia manifests in the form of a severe fear of gaining weight but can stem from many other sources. While the disorder does have a genetic component, it is also correlated with negative life experiences such as sexual assault or domestic abuse. 

As the disorder usually begins sometime during adolescence, it often occurs alongside the formation of identity and can therefore be extremely difficult to recover from. Anorexia also “feeds itself” in the sense that a person with anorexia will not have an accurate perception of their own body or health and thus will continue to avoid eating in order to achieve more weight loss. Anorexia comes with the stigma of all mental illnesses, along with its own unique stigma because it may be visible.