Slim to None: A Journey Through the Wasteland of Anorexia Treatment - Hardcover

Hendricks, Jennifer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071410694 ISBN 13: 9780071410694

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Contemporary, 2003

Synopsis

A young woman's fatal battle with anorexia, in her own words In the tradition of Go Ask Alice, Prozac Nation, and Girl Interrupted, Slim to None grants readers precious access to the emotional and psychological underpinnings of its author. Step-by-step, readers follow Jenny's long journey through a "wasteland" of failed treatments and therapies, false hope, and abuse by the mental health system that kept her captive most of her life. Although this disease has been at the forefront of public awareness for years, anorexia continues to claim more victims than any other mental illness. Slim to None reveals the glaring inadequacy of the mental health system to treat and fully understand this disease. The first journal of an anorexic to be published posthumously, the book discloses the innermost thoughts, fears, and hopes of a young girl stricken and fighting to recover.

About this title

Review:

An important book... Jenny Hendrick's diary entries speak to us directly without manipulation... A valuable head-start to understanding one anorexic's personality. - Steven Levenkron, author of The Best Little Girl in the World; Patients' voices can all too easily be forgotten in the world of mental health care, but Jenny's voice rings strong. Through this earnest and captivating exposure, her father succeeds in keeping her story alive. - David B. Herzog, M.D., president and founder of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center; [Jennifer Hendricks] at times despairing, at times hopeful, fought to be cured of anorexia nervosa, one of the disorder. But as the diary she kept shows, a widespread lack of understanding about eating disorders and scatter-gun treatment programs make the battle almost insurmountable... a sorrow to read. - New York Times

From the Back Cover:

"It took three weeks for my body to shut down. When I was close to the end, I couldn't see very well and could talk only in hoarse whispers because my mouth was so dry. I slept most of the time. But I didn't feel sick. I felt at peace, finally emptied of all the mind and body filth. No more terrifying flashbacks. No more disgust with my body . . . with me. Nothing hurt. I wasn't even hungry. And I didn't have to worry about how guilty I feel when I eat and throw up, and even worse, how anguished I feel when I eat and don't throw up."
Jenny Hendricks, age twenty-five

The true story of one brave young woman's fatal battle with anorexia, from its onset until her final days in her own words

"This book is a cry from the heart of an anguished father who has enriched our understanding of anorexia as described by his remarkable daughter Jenny in the journals she wrote leading up to her death."
George McGovern, former U.S. senator and author of Terry: My Daughter's Life and Death Struggle with Alcoholism

"Through Jennifer Hendricks' words, we see that anorexia nervosa is a lethal obsession. Her book provides education and awareness that can help others understand and overcome this disease."
Christopher Athas, vice president of the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD)

"Patients' voices can all too easily be forgotten in the world of mental health care, but Jenny's voice rings strong. Through this earnest and captivating exposure, her father succeeds in keeping her story alive."
David B. Herzog, M.D., president and founder of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center

This eloquently written, heart-wrenching book shares a brave but tormented young woman's candid chronicle of her long and ultimately fatal battle with the eating disorder anorexia. In the tradition of Go Ask Alice, Wasted, and Girl Interrupted, the late Jenny Hendricks speaks to you from her own carefully detailed personal journals a practice suggested as treatment by one of her many doctors.

Gently edited and narrated by her father, Slim to None vividly illustrates Jenny's intense emotional struggles her pride at improving her health clashing with her undefined guilt over eating, her internal conflict between will and reason, and the dispiriting war between self-confidence and self-doubt that plagued her. Most of all, here is an amazing account of the efforts to understand the root of an illness that continues to confound the mental-health system, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

As we are privy to over a decade of Jenny's battle, much of it spent in hospital confinement, we are also witness to an often painfully incoherent series of treatment approaches. From a confrontational therapist to a pseudo Christian savior who tried to exorcise her to myriad therapy programs, conflicting speculations, and diagnoses from numerous experts, including psychiatrists, psychologists, and MDs, here we learn what is really discussed between a suicidal anorexic and her caretakers as well as the family dynamics at work and their possible role in the illness.

Reading of the many frustrating, fruitless attempts to "cure" Jenny, we, like her family, are finally left to grapple with the unanswered questions and tragic mystery at the heart of her demise and to fulfill her last wish by accepting the rare gift of her compelling story.

About this edition

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Contemporary
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0071410694
• ISBN 13: 9780071410694
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256