Beneath the Symptom: A Catholic Christian Approach to Eating Disorders

She came in for the drinking, or the depression, or an old trauma she had almost stopped mentioning. The eating disorder was never on the intake form — and it was the thing most likely to kill her. Eating disorders carry the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, and they are far more common than most counselors assume, yet they are easy to miss and easy to misread. In this course, Dr. Fredericka Vyvlecka, Director of the Counseling Program at Divine Mercy University, teaches helping professionals how to see what is really there. Drawing on years of clinical work — much of it with clients whose eating disorders surfaced alongside addiction and trauma — she distinguishes anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder; explains the comorbidities that should sharpen a counselor’s assessment; and shows why a person in the grip of anorexia genuinely cannot see the body everyone around her fears for. What sets this course apart is that it never stops at the symptom. Grounded in the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, it treats disordered eating as a wound in the whole person — body, mind, relationships, and spirit — and equips you to assess with both clinical rigor and a clear sense of the person’s dignity.