Story 2 Pitch

My idea is to write about my experience this past summer at an eating disorder rehab facility in Chicago. This article will detail the process of my journey: collapse, treatment and recovery. It will also include my discovery as to why I needed help in the first place, immersing myself into a scarily vulnerable environment, and most importantly, the discoveries I made in treatment. While not fun to admit, suffering with binge eating disorder is challenging and takes a lot of psychological treatment to overcome. Out of the three main eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating), binge eating is often the most overlooked and forgotten, as it was only officially recognized as a disorder a few years ago and is known as the “invisible” disorder. That said, the goal of this article is not only to share my discoveries in treatment, but also to educate on the disorder itself, life while in treatment, and the family dynamic in order to hopefully alleviate the stigma surrounding seeking serious help from mental health facilities. It is also important to note that there will be information included about depressive and anxiety disorders, as binge eating is often a bi-product of them.

I am struggling to come up with a headline that encapsulates everything I wish to talk about, but a possible headline I am considering is “Gaining Insight: ______” (It would be a play on words because the facility was named Insight).. The main voice in the story will be myself, but I want to spotlight voices of family, friends, and professionals as well. My nut graph/ thesis so far is “Binge eating disorders are usually overlooked, but I couldn’t ignore mine any longer. Seeking treatment did not only change my life — it affected my loved ones significantly. Now recovered, I am revisiting my own experiences and those of my family members to understand how my time in treatment changed us all”. I will also utilize statistics in order to give my reader a larger perspective about this disorder (ex: how many people in the U.S have it, how many people don’t get treated, etc.). I am qualified to write about this topic because I have lived through this experience, and I have also written about mental health before (service dogs on LMU’s campus). I also want to stress how one’s struggles with mental health affects their family. In order to do so, I want to spotlight the voices of my family to give the reader an idea of what kind of toll this took on those closest to me. I will interview my family to find out what was going through their minds when they saw me going through this time in my life. I understand this is a very difficult topic to talk about, but I am finally ready to share. I trust my peers enough to be open and a bit vulnerable. I believe this article would offer important lessons of growth, recovery, family values, and overall psychological and behavioral healthcare. It is also important to note that I would like to model my essay similarly to Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”.

• 5 W’s
• Who? Myself and the people affected
• What? Depression/Anxiety, binge eating disorder, Insight Behavioral Health Center
• When? Summer 2019
• Why? The stigma surrounding the need to seek serious treatment (rehab facilities, intense psychological care), binge eating disorders are not talked about enough
• Where? Chicago, IL
• How? People may assume that someone who goes to a rehabilitation center may be “crazy” because they need more help than the average person