To The Bone Ellen Collins Character Traits

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER PAPER - TO THE BONE
Thani Christy
Community College of Baltimore County

PLOT AND CHARACTERS
Ellen (Lily Collins), the main character in the movie, TO THE BONE, is a 20-year-old artist and college dropout. Having been coerced into an inpatient program and failing to record any considerable progress, she returns to her to the house of her stepmother and father. Susan, her stepmother sets her up with a specialist, Dr. William Beckham.
Her behavior, and that of the people she interacts with – her step-mother and half-sister being her most immediate family – suggests her condition is at quite an advanced stage. She eats, but not really. She exercises compulsively. She can correctly guess the number of calories

She embraces her stepmother and her sister before continuing on to Beckham's inpatient program. "To the Bone" does not get at root causes. It does not try to explain why. It does not lecture. All of this is in its favor, to a degree. But Ellen herself remains a cipher. There's a lack of interest in who she is, what she's about, where she's coming from. We see what she does, we see her outward "attitude," but that's about it.
ANOREXIA NERVOSA. “Most people don’t seem to take eating disorders as seriously as they take other types of psychological disorders”. (Weiten, 2017). Anorexia nervosa is a serious eating disorder that results in unhealthy, often dangerous weight loss. While it is most common among adolescent women, anorexia can affect women and men of all ages and is characterized by a refusal to maintain a healthy body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted body image.
Weiten (2017) states that the three syndromes of eating disorders are: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and a new syndrome added to DSM-5 called binge-eating

Pretending to eat or lying about eating – Hiding, playing with, or throwing away food to avoid eating.
Appearance and body image symptoms that is Dramatic weight loss – Rapid, drastic weight loss with no medical cause. Fixation on body image – Obsessed with weight, body shape, or clothing size. Frequent weigh-ins and concern over tiny fluctuations in weight. Harshly critical of appearance – Spending a lot of time in front of the mirror checking for flaws.
Purging symptoms by using diet pills, laxatives, or diuretics - Abusing water pills, prescription stimulants, and other drugs for weight loss. Throwing up after eating – Frequently disappearing after meals or going to the bathroom. Runs the water to disguise sounds of vomiting and reappears smelling like mouthwash or mints. Compulsive exercising – Following a punishing exercise regimen aimed at burning calories. Exercising through injuries, illness, and bad weather. Working out extra hard after bingeing or eating something