By Ashley Illenye
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Society must change the narrative around mental illness so that people who suffer from anorexia and other ailments are not blamed for their disease, a leading eating disorder advocate said in a speech at Sheppard Pratt on Feb. 25.
Kitty Westin, who lost her daughter to anorexia by suicide in 2000, said doctors and other professionals used to blame the parents for their children’s mental illness. In her case, Westin said doctors advised her to let her daughter handle her anorexia on her own.
“If she were diabetic and I weren’t going to give her insulin, I’d get social services called on me,” Westin said in a speech to kick off Eating Disorder Awareness Week. “It about the perception of what is in our control. We don’t see breast cancer as within our control, but conversely, we see mental illness as something we bring upon ourselves.”
As Westin described the “cold, bleak February morning” when she found her daughter lifeless on her bedroom floor, she became emotional. Tears welled in her eyes as she relived the event from 18 years ago when she begged and pleaded for her daughter to wake up.
The audience reciprocated. During the Q&A part of the presentation, several audience members said they or immediate family were affected by eating disorders.
Robin Robb, a mother of a teen with an eating disorder, shared her experience.
“I need another eating disorder patient like I need a hole in head,” a doctor told Robb when she brought her 16-year-old daughter to receive the help she desperately needed.
After Anna’s death, Westin received countless stories like Robb’s. One thing Westin knew while planning her daughter’s funeral was that she didn’t want Anna’s death to be silenced. While writing her daughter’s obituary, Westin was advised to keep the cause of death, suicide, out of the celebration of Anna’s life.
“My family refused to talk in whispers about Anna’s death,” Westin said. “We refused to accept stigma. We would not be made fun of. We would not be laughed at.”
Instead of having flowers sent to the funeral home, she requested that donations be made to the Anna Westin Foundation, which Westin made up on the spot.
The foundation soon received another deposit. Following the year of Anna’s death, the president of Blue Cross Blue Shield Minnesota contacted Westin and her husband. The insurance company gave the Westin’s $1 million.
Now called the Emily Program Foundation, the Anna Westin Foundation’s goal was to restore dignity and self-respect to people who have eating disorders. Westin was the president of the organization. Later, she became the president of the Eating Disorders Coalition in Washington.
Being president of those two associations motivated Westin to push Congress for legislation to mandate training in schools and to healthcare professionals to be able to identify and help individuals with eating disorders.
In 2015, Westin sat in the gallery as the House of Representatives approved the Anna Westin Act, which was later approved by the Senate. Westin said she thought this would be the last place she saw the bill until she received an email from the White House inviting her to then President Obama’s singing of the legislation.
“President Obama was in front of me, he took my hand and he gave me this big hug,” Westin said. “When he was talking to me– I was like the only person in the room.”
Westin said that the experience was a beautiful ending to an 18-year long struggle. Although she said she thinks about her artistic, creative and warm child every day, Westin never blamed her for taking her life. Westin said she finally found peace knowing that, with the legislation passed, Anna’s legacy would live on and help others who struggled like she did.
“May all your love, joy and pain, may all your fears and desires lead you to your own promises. May your dreaming never end and your joy never die,” Anna Westin wrote in her diary shortly before her death.