Counseling and support groups focus highlight eating disorders

Liberty University is focused on eating disorders, the mental illness with the highest mortality rate, affecting at least 30 million people of all ages and genders, with the school being no exception.

Currently, the Student Counseling Services at Liberty provides counseling and support services for all different mental illnesses and looks to get students connected with help, whether that be on or off campus.

“Everybody who comes to us with eating disorders will meet up with someone and will get care,” Executive Director of Student Counseling Services Mike Kunzinger said. “They will be plugged in either with the eating disorder group, will be plugged in with someone for individual counseling, here or off campus. Usually it’s a long-term process.”

Generally, if a student is in need of any long-term counseling, they will be referred off-campus to make sure they have the support they need.

Student Counselor Emily Budowanec said the illness of eating disorders is very difficult to address.

“Eating disorders, in particular, have a lot of health concerns that come along with them, so you want to have that doctor side of that as well because … we’re not taking in the appropriate amount of calories, and we’re purging and things like that — it can cause a lot of problems because of the way your body is functioning,” Budowanec said.  “Like with any other medical condition, you want someone checking in and making sure that the problem is not growing worse as we’re working on the more emotional and mental side of it. And I think, like with everything else, there are levels where eating is disordered for many folks and then there is a line where it becomes severe or becomes clinical.”

Budowanec leads a Liberty official eating disorder support group weekly called “Making Peace with Food.”

Sophomore psychology student Tessa Russell tried to help the situation by starting an unofficial student-run peer support group.  After realizing that official University approval and oversight is needed for such a support group, Russell has been working with SGA to receive approval as a student club.  It also has been decided that a faculty adviser with professional training will be utilized to ensure appropriate professional supervision is in place.

Kunzinger said the fact that students are passionate enough about ending certain mental illnesses to start their own group is an encouragement to the staff.

“We’re excited that students are stepping up and raising awareness and wanting to get together and to have conversations because, to be quite honest, Student Counseling Services can’t do this on our own,” Kunzinger said. “It’s inspiring to see students take up different flags and rally other students to get involved and do these things. We need students to get involved.”

Russell started the group in the fall of 2015 who felt like she was not getting the care she needed when she arrived on campus.

“Throughout all of high school I struggled with an eating disorder, and I started recovering my senior year of high school … I got a lot of support where I lived back home, but then when I transitioned to Lynchburg, I couldn’t really find anything in the area,” Russell said. “I was pretty discouraged by that, kind of feeling that I need a program, or some sort of support, and I wasn’t able to find it. And so, I kind of tried to just continue my recovery on my own and checking in with my treatment team back home over the phone every couple of weeks.”

Russell relapsed badly that spring 2016 semester, leaving school and returning in the fall of 2017. Russell sought help at home, and then when she was stable, planned to return to Liberty.

“So, when I first started thinking about coming back to school this past summer, I knew that if I came back, I wanted it to be much different than my first year,” Russell said. “Because of the nature of eating disorders, they themselves are just very isolating. People tend to withdraw when they’re really struggling … I didn’t want any student to feel the way I felt my freshmen year or go through the things that I went through all by themselves.”

Russell began the group in October of 2017 and said it had attracted around 30 people.

“My hope was really just to build a community of students that can meet up together and share their highs and their lows and what’s going well in recovery and what has been challenging, just to be going through the journey of recovery together, not doing it on their own,” Russell said. “There were so many years where I felt like it was never going to get better,” Russell said. “Recovery takes time, and it takes a lot of hard work. But in the end, I really believe that you can 100 percent recover, and I would like to give that hope to anyone who is struggling. It’s never too late to start recovering.”