Back to School: While a Fresh Start, College Also Can Trigger Harmful Lifestyle Choices

I wanted to let everyone know about a book my colleague here at Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Center, Jena Morrow, recently published: Hollow: An Unpolished Tale. This book details a battle with anorexia that begins in early childhood, and also one where college gave her the perfect opportunity to delve deep into her disease.

College is supposed to be an exciting time in a young woman’s life; a chance for a fresh start, the opportunity to make decisions that will impact the rest of her life. But for Jena, college life brought negative and harmful lifestyle choices into the forefront.

Jena found college to be the most opportune time to really elope in harmful behavior, a sickness that almost killed her – anorexia.

In college, Jena hid her disease because she was no longer under the watchful eye of her parents, high school teachers or long-time friends. She was able to lie and deceive those who did not know any better.

She even recounted this story for me: "At the beginning of college, my parents bought a meal card for me, but there was one catch: I had to sign a paper upon arrival to college to activate it. I just never signed the paper; my parents never knew, and I played it off as a dumb mistake to my new friends. It was easy to hide my disease from people at college because they didn’t know I ever had a problem. I would avoid social situations where I knew food would be present, and in a way, isolated myself.”

With help, she’s had the strength to recover, and one of her messages in the book is a powerful one: the stresses, freedom and autonomy of college combine to create the perfect opportunity to practice life skills, but it’s also an ideal time for negative influences to have an impact and cause unknown internal triggers to show up for the first time.

Jena did relapse later in life, but after becoming a mother she realized she had more to live for – and is now happily in recovery. Currently working as a behavioral health specialist at Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Center, Jena wrote her book to give hope to others struggling with an eating disorder, as well as create awareness and open people’s eyes to the impact and prevalence of these diseases.