While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.

Provides basic consumer health information for teens about causes, prevention, and treatment of eating disorders, along with healthy eating tips.

Provides a basic, comprehensive introduction to eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating, with a review of where to find help and how to make wise food choices to become healthy.

Ellie learns to deal with her self-image as she battles anorexia.

For many teens today, the carefree days of youth are anything but happy-go-lucky. From alcohol and other drug use to relationship issues and sex to depression and eating disorders, teens are confronted with high-risk pressures and problems-whether experienced personally, through their friends, or with family members. Where can teens turn for help and advice. The experts at KidsPeace, a nonprofit organization serving children and families in crisis, created this lively, interactive book to help teens handle difficult issues and develop confidence in their own abilities and self-worth. Personal stories, fast facts, and self-tests help teens learn how to recognize when a friend or family member is in trouble and find help, to identify their own issues and seek help, and to take care of themselves when feeling overwhelmed by problems of friends or family members. In the process, teens learn one of life's greatest lessons about healing-the importance of connecting with others who understand, care, and can help.

Inside thirteen-year-old Jessica lives The Monkey, a driving, fiery voice telling her that thinness is the only way. This story tells the terrible realities of the adolescent psychiatric unit and Jessica's choice to either tame her monster or die.

When his parents decide to separate, eighth-grader Donnie watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister, Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.

Feeling like she does not fit in with the other members of her family, who are all thin, brilliant, and good-looking, fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to deal with her self-image, her first physical relationship, and her disillusionment with some of the people closest to her.

“I didn’t decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier . . .” Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role. This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work—first as a child model in Australia, then as a cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying. In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point. Even as she rose to fame as a cast member of the hit television shows Ally McBeal and Arrested Development, Portia alternately starved herself and binged, all the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be exposed in the tabloids. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner. With the storytelling skills of a great novelist and the eye for detail of a poet, Portia makes transparent as never before the behaviors and emotions of someone living with an eating disorder. From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of health and honesty, falling in love with and eventually marrying Ellen DeGeneres, and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues. In this remarkable and beautifully written work, Portia shines a bright light on a dark subject. A crucial book for all those who might sometimes feel at war with themselves or their bodies, Unbearable Lightness is a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.