Ingeborg Senneset has written an honest, unflinching and unsentimental account of the illness from the inside.
How does a patient with anorexia and obsessive-compulsive disorder experience psychiatry? What kind of battles are fought inside a person that wants to end an illness that since childhood has acted as a lifeline and the same time been a lethal threat? What does it take to let go? How much does weight really matter?
Through admissions to three different psychiatric facilities for a total of three years, Ingeborg Senneset documented the slow task of regaining control over her own life. Through meetings with the best and the worst sides of health care, paradoxes and conflicts both on an interpersonal and private level, we get the whole story. Anorectic is an honest, ruthless and unsentimental depiction of the inside of the illness and the hospitals by an author that has the unique combination of being a patient, journalist and nurse.
"Ingeborg Sennesets dark howl from hell has despite all the pain and anxiety become a documentary that work like a guiding light for all those others. (...) Relatives, therapists and anyone who has ever wondered how this sickness is experienced. Anyone with the slightest fragment of empathy in them should read this book, to understand more about mental illness."
AFTENPOSTEN