What people say about Eating With Your Anorexic:
The Renfrew Foundation Winter Newsletter book review by Eileen Binckley: "Whether meeting them in person or reading this account, you can feel the inspiration of their efforts."
Los Angeles Times, "'What most of us get is really very crappy," says Laura Collins...right now it's like a 911 call and the first ambulance that comes, you take."
Cleveland Plain Dealer, "...Collins desperately tried to find help and initiated a journey she painfully maps out for us in "Eating With Your Anorexic." At once tender and gruesomely honest, it is more autobiography than self-help guide book." (Jenny Staletovich Special to The Plain Dealer)
Hartford Courant: "Like many other parents of anorexic daughters, Collins said she definitely got the message from the therapeutic community that somehow she and her husband were to blame for Olympia's illness." (Kathleen Megan)
San Diego Union-Tribune: "...the personal story of how she and her husband treated their 14-year-old daughter's eating disorder at home using a British method called the Maudsley Approach." (Jane Clifford)
Library Journal: "...This is an important title for professionals and a vital resource for families dealing with eating disorders…recommended for larger public libraries and for university libraries supporting the medical and helping professions.
AMAZON.COM REVIEWERS:
"This personal account is well worth the price of the common-sense, hands-on, and emotional support it offers in helping your child back to health...I read it through in a sitting during and after an early "refeeding" meal, and it helped stabilize my resolve to stick it out. It gave me more detailed advice more quickly than I could get from our professional, and thus paid for its price many times over. And your child's health is priceless anyway."
"I'd recommend this book to the parents of any young anorexic... hope is exactly what this book offers."
"The author, Laura Collins, bashes on the professional approach towards the disease, but that is only because it did not work for her daughter. I think the book is very well written and it offers guidance to those in this situation, but I do not think that there was enough evidence behind her accusations against doctors. Laura Collins provides the reader with day to day information on how she helped her daughter. She allows readers to realize there is more than one way to treat anorexia nervosa. At the same time, Collins degrades other treatments making it sound as if family based is the only way out. From my own personal experience, I know this is not the case. She should have backed up her accusations with substantial evidence. This would have made her book more believable and reliable in the long run."
"Her vivid account of her oddessy with finding treatment for her suffering daughter and her steely resolve to personally help her daughter with the best available treatment based upon the Maudsley Method is inspiring..... I forsee a day when "family supported nutrition" will be the first line of attack against the awful illness of anorexia."
" I did not like this mother one little bit... I actually wholeheartedly agree that addiction is not a choice and it is totally unfair to always automatically blame the families. However, I got the chills when reading this book - this is one mother with control issues....On the other hand, if my daughter was in this position, I may very well do the same thing."
"As a fellow parent of a teenage anorexia sufferer I have nothing but admiration for Laura Collins dedication to seeing her daughter recover. While home refeeding of anorexics is sometimes deemed "controversial" it make intuitive sense to most parents.
"The only cure is weight gain, but many parents, thinking that they are somehow to blame, back off just when their child needs them most. Collins' gentle, loving resolve shows how families can help their anorexic recover."
"The book (minus the glossed over bits) didn't much captivate me. She gave little to no explanation to how they actually got their daughter to consume the vast amounts of food. Any anorexic I have ever met (myself included) would not have been party to this treatment...If a parent does wish to go ahead and try this Maudsley method, I would reccomend that he/she not let her son/daughter read this book before a stable recovery point. The mention of hiding butter in every type of food (including milk) will be enough to send him/her running as fast as their emaciated legs can carry them."
"Ms. Collins seems to think she has reinvented the wheel in this account. In what can only be described as a gross oversimplification of the treatment and recovery of anorexia nervosa. By stating that she never gave Olympia the choice whether or not to comply. If curing anorexia was as simple as making the sufferer eat, the hospital programs would be more effective when they refeed patients. I was disappointed in what could have been an interesting book."
"I am lucky enough to have found the kind of treatment Laura Collins describes for my daughter (at the Clinic mentioned in her book). The writer's struggles and sorrows are so familiar, reassuring and inspiring. "
"Eating with Your Anorexic" is a book I will reread, especially the last pages, 'Parent to Parent: What I would say to you over coffee'."
"Finally, Laura Collins dispels the myth of the perfectionistic, weight-obsessed, "anorexigenic" mother and suggests that parents can be the cure for rather than the cause of eating disorders. Readers will find the story of this author's daughter and her journey through anorexia insightful and encouraging."
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