When Rachel* feels pressures from school and social drama, she consumes large quantities of food in order to cope. Rachel eats anything from candy, to chips to a whole pail of ice cream in 20 minutes when she binge eats.

In an anonymous interview, a Park student shared her experiences with binge eating disorder.

Rachel said when she experiences social drama, feels sad or stressed about an upcoming test, she said eating helps her temporarily escape reality.

“You can’t feel anything for a couple minutes,” Rachel said. “Because you eat so much, your body kind of just shuts down.”

Heather Gallivan is the clinical director at Melrose Center, a facility that treats people with eating disorders. She said someone who has binge eating disorder is unable to control their eating and consumes a lot of food in a short amount of time.

“Binge eating disorder is the most prevalent of all the eating disorders,” Gallivan said. “It is when a person struggles with eating very large amounts of food where it feels like they can’t control or stop themselves.”

Rachel said her ongoing struggle with food began when she was bullied.

“In sixth grade, I got bullied a lot, and I would just go home. I wouldn’t cry because I never cried when I was in sixth grade,” Rachel said. “I just started eating and it’s not controllable.”

Gallivan said she notices many people develop binge eating disorder long before they receive treatment.

“A lot of times people are actually coming in for treatment, and they’re quite a bit older, like middle-aged, 40 and up,” Gallivan said. “However, most of them, almost all of them actually, started binge eating when they were in high school or college.”

Sophomore DaShaun Emerson said he believes students need to educate themselves about binge eating so they can empathize with those who have the disorder.

“Everyone should know what’s going on and what certain people are going through, or how to help people stop binge eating,” Emerson said.

Gallivan said binge eating became an official eating disorder May 2014, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders released its fifth edition.

A correlation exists between binge eating disorder and a person’s emotions, according to Gallivan.

“Most people, when they binge eat, are doing it for a reason,” Gallivan said. “They’re not just doing it because they think they like the food. Usually it’s related to stress, depression, anxiety.”

Health teacher Allison Luskey said people must address their emotional and mental health issues in order to treat binge eating disorder.

“I think the underlying issues (are) emotions, mental health, those things — until that gets addressed, it’s really hard to treat the binge eating,” Luskey said.

Luskey said because of the prevalence of binge eating disorder, she encourages those struggling to open up and ask for help.

Rachel said opening up to her friends about her eating disorder gave her people to rely on so she didn’t have to go through the struggle alone.

“My friends support me by watching what I eat, and they know what’s best for me and what’s not,” Rachel said.

School social worker Daniel Perez said people must acknowledge their struggle with binge eating disorder before receiving help.

“The first step in actually finding the help they need, and the encouragement and support and love that they need, is actually being honest,” Perez said.

Perez said he believes a negative stigma surrounds binge eating, causing people with this disorder to feel alone.

“I think binge eaters can feel so isolated and so alone because they can’t tell anybody, because if they tell somebody, they’re going to be judged,” Perez said.

Luskey said students can help someone struggling with binge eating disorder by showing healthy eating habits and openly talking about their feelings.

“(Friends can help by) being somebody who models a healthy relationship with talking about feelings and emotions, but also a healthy relationship with self-image and body image and a healthy relationship with food,” Luskey said.

Luskey said people suffering from binge eating disorder begin overcoming some of their struggles by accepting help from others.

“I think the first and probably the hardest (step) is to open up and talk to somebody about it, because we wouldn’t be talking about it in class or have a name for it if it wasn’t common, and if it wasn’t real,” Luskey said.

Rachel said people should ask for help if they have the disorder because it’s not something to be ashamed of.

“If you have it, and you feel like you have it, you should go talk to somebody, because it’s not something you should hide,” Rachel said.

*Name has been changed