By Carl Wikeley

It’s late in 2008, and I’ve just been to the doctor’s against my will. My mum tells me if I don’t get
better, I’ll have to be committed to the Leigh House, a hospital for mentally ill young people. I weigh
in at an extremely low percentile for teenage boys, I’m barely eating anything, and I can’t see a way
out.

A year later, into 2010, and my weight is normal, I am eating better - I no longer look ill. I am
incredibly lucky.

My experience with mental health has been unusual, developing issues extremely early - especially
for a boy - and recovering surprisingly quickly. That’s not to say I’m completely better now, at 21, Commented [e1]: why especially for a boy? as a
because I still have my problems. But my friends at university won’t have known about my mental comparative demographic statement I feel we perhaps
need to back this up with some evidence, as with the
health problems. The average age to develop anorexia or bulimia, for instance, is 16 or 17. I count hyperlink below. Alternatively, you could delete this and
myself incredibly lucky not only to have recovered by the time I was 15, but simply to have recovered I don’t think it would affect the meaning too greatly.
in the first place. Commented [e2]: I just changed the footnote to a
hyperlink!

In all other ways, I’m a late-bloomer (I have approx. 2 facial hairs), but with mental health, I was the
earliest of all the birds: before secondary-school level, I had already received CBT (cognitive
behavioural therapy) for OCD. It started when I hadn’t even reached double figures. My main
symptom was obsessively checking the dates on food. Imagine being so terrified of eating out-of-date
food that you don’t let anything in your mouth until you know it’s at least a day ‘in date’. To think of
the things I put in my mouth now... Commented [e3]: I love how your humour and
personality comes through throughout, but I am not
100% how the tone of this particular bit sits in between
One mental health issue went, another came - and quickly. The earliest memory I have of anorexic these two paragraphs? That being said, if you are keen
thoughts is getting some kind of pleasure from eating less. Think teenage boy, and you probably think on this bit I fully support you keeping it- flagging it up
but up to you!
of a disgusting smelly mess who eats too much. I wasn’t smelly, and I certainly didn’t eat too much.
In fact, over the course of a year or so, I ate so little that I was admitted to hospital with dangerously
low blood pressure.

A few more days, the doctors said, and I could’ve suffered multiple organ failure.

How does that happen? I can barely wrap my head around it now.

Watching Louis Theroux’s recent documentary on anorexia, I had a curious thought: I’ve never really
considered why I might’ve developed an eating disorder, at such an early age.

The ‘normal’ factors of media images, body pressure and peer tension didn’t really make sense in my
case. I was never picked-on for my weight or appearance, I didn’t read or watch health, diet or beauty
media compulsively, and I couldn’t have cared less about looking like a male model, or body builder.

Then I thought about control: a classic reason given as a mental health trigger. In OCD and related
disorders (such as anorexia), we are often told that those with the condition want to exercise control -
through compulsive behaviour - because they are losing, or feel like they have lost control in other
aspects of their life: if you can’t control what goes on at school, you start counting calories.
But this didn’t really make sense, either. And to a certain extent, I don’t think it makes sense to search
for triggers at all, because there never is an obvious one. I know genetic predisposition, family
histories and more can play a part. But this doesn’t stop you wanting to know why.

In fact, what if I had been thinking about this in entirely the wrong way? What if the key to Commented [e4]: I LOVE what you’ve done with this
understanding my mental illness was not searching for the root cause, but thinking about its effects? from here on out, fab!!!

What if my mental illness acts acted as a trigger for me to confront various aspects of my identity? I
think, paradoxically, a good way to understand mental health is not by asking ‘why’, but by asking
‘what next?’

This is how I understand myself as privileged: not by glamorizing mental illness, but by seeing how it
may have affected my identity, causing me to explore and confront myself at an earlier age than many
people. Before recovering from anorexia and OCD, I considered myself Jewish, and straight: what
next?

I don’t think it was entirely a coincidence that I began to develop anorexia while preparing for my Bar
Mitzvah. In many cases, it seems, exams such as GCSEs can act as potential triggers for mental health
crises - so maybe my Jewish ‘coming of age’ was that trigger. To be clear, I hated learning to read
Hebrew, and the stress of that could have played a part in my developing the condition.

So maybe Judaism has taken two things from me: my early teen years, lost to mental health; and my
long-gone foreskin. Miss you, foreskin (actually, I don’t really). But, in asking ‘what next?’, I wonder
whether my mental health crisis gave the me privilege of feeling able to confront my religious
identity. I think a more helpful way of understanding my anorexia is not as a rebellion against
religion, but as leading to me question it, and ultimately identifying as an atheist. Commented [e5]: YES GREAT

Next, I wondered whether questions over my sexuality identity acted as a trigger. When I was in
primary school, my mum caught me looking at two men kissing on the family computer. I was young,
foolish, and was convinced we had enough bandwidth on the modem to load that risque JPEG. I was
wrong - thanks Windows XP.

After this somewhat scarring moment, I never once questioned my sexuality until later, in secondary
school. At 13 or 14, I liked boobs - I knew that. But I also began to think about boys, and that was
strange.

Curiously, while my eating disorder may have stunted my physical growth, I feel like I gained years
on my peers in other ways. Soon after my recovery, when a boy I knew asked if I was gay, I said
“Yes”. Without hesitation. I’d never even thought about it before. Thinking about it now, though, I
might have been a bit hasty - I now identify as bisexual - but it was exciting, ok?

By 18, I had been with three guys and a couple of girls, and I felt pretty great. Is that a humble brag?

Again, I don’t think it’s helpful for me to labour over the question of whether sexual insecurities
triggered my mental health issues. I’m no psychoanalyst, and I immediately apologise to anyone who
is for implying your profession is as simplistic as that. So I ask, ‘what next?’, and see that, although I
developed anorexia at an early age, I also came to explore my sexual identity before many of my
friends.
Commented [e6]: GREAT
To explore one’s identity is a privilege some people never get, because of their race, sexuality, gender,
or own mental health situation. So, I don’t thank my mental illness for that, but I do think I understand
it a little better. Commented [e7]: I’m wondering if you could add in a
sentence here at the end of this paragraph, something
like: ‘Thanks to the support I received, my mental
Of course, I feel lucky to have had incredibly treatment from the NHS, without whom I definitely health diagnosis didn’t have to be a roadblock, but the
wouldn’t be here. My sister, then incredibly supportive, is a former NHS junior doctor, but she start of a new path.’ Feel free to take this sentence
wholesale or come up with something else that doesn’t
escaped to Australia and is apparently now on holiday 24/7, only occasionally diverting to save a life. involve my proclivity for slightly cheesy metaphors.
With a clown like Jeremy Hunt still unbelievably our health secretary, and with many BME people
facing tough mental health issues, we need everyone tovery few get to experience the privileges I
have. Each young person should be able to explore their identity from the earliest of ages, and mental
health shouldn’t stop that.