I would agree that what we need is more awareness and understanding of the disease (and eating disorders are indeed DISEASES and should be treated as such). That story about the teacher accusing the girl of “looking for attention”- that can only stem from ignorance. The teacher is not a bad person, she simply does not understand that anorexia is not just “acting out” and it’s not going to stop or go away because of tough love, reward/punishment or any other general educational tool; it is a disease and needs to be dealt with by experienced professionals (another important point brought up is the need for more frum experts in this area). No parent or teacher should try to take care of it alone.
The other big misconception is that there is some ’cause’ behind it that we can address. While there are FACTORS that can push someone over the edge (such as the need to be a certain size for shidduch purposes), there is no one cause. Every girl is pressured to be skinny, but very few actually develop eating disorders (I know it doesn’t seem that way, but the numbers really are pretty low). Just like eating disorders won’t go away with coaxing and cajoling, they won’t go away even if we did stop focusing on appearances.
May HKBH send a refuah shelaima to to all those suffering from this terrible disease!