ED Qs: eating disorders & their relation to other mental illnesses

The depression, is it a cause or a consequence?

It depends on the person. Not everyone with an ED has depression, although it is very common. Anxiety is common as well, as are addiction problems, OCD, bipolar disorder, etc. I personally have found that although the ED is the most deadly part, it's rarely the underlying issue. It's usually a reaction, a coping mechanism for something else that was there first.

I personally couldn't tell you which came first; I used to think it was the depression (I have distinct memories of having depression attacks in pre-school), until I got out of treatment and my anxiety went through the roof. The ED was a way of managing the anxiety, of numbing the brain, although it unfortunately did nothing for the depression (shocker: low body weight & malnourishment makes you depressed. It also makes anti-depressant medications basically non-functional). I honestly couldn't tell you which came first, and which came as a reaction to another. All are genetic, to a certain extent.

In the past 4 years I've found that I have to maintain a sort of balance between my disorders - if I focus on the depression, the anxiety goes up. If I focus on the anxiety, the depression goes up. Or maybe it's the other way around, when one is bad the other is tolerable. Either way, it comes down to tradeoff management. My therapist once compared me to a patient with schizophrenia, who had medication to treat the symptoms. If she didn't take it, she was non-functional because of the illness. If she took enough to completely negate the symptoms, she was non-functional because the meds made her so out of it. So she had to learn to live somewhere in between.

Have I mentioned mental illnesses are Hard?