West Hartford Doctor Honored For Eating Disorder Work

Oct. 17--West Hartford doctor Margo Maine, who specializes in eating disorders, is being honored by the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame this year for her 35 years of work in the field.

Maine, a clinical psychologist, has worked out of the Maine and Weinstein Speciality Group, in West Hartford, for the last 16 years. She chose to specialize in eating disorders because it combined her interests in health, the body, culture, and gender.

"I had always been interested in gender and the differences between men and women and how the culture affects us as gendered people," Maine said. "When we started to see young women with eating disorders, I thought it had a lot to do with cultural pressures on them."

Maine, a West Hartford resident, recalls advice from a few of her supervisors given to her while she was getting her doctorate that she's glad she didn't listen to.

"They told me I shouldn't specialize in eating disorders because it was 'just a fad,'" Maine said. "I knew that it wasn't a fad. I knew that something really powerful going on in our culture was a toxic environment for young women."

Maine, who will be honored by the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame at the 2016 ceremony on Nov. 2, has written seven books about eating disorders and speaks on the subject across the country and internationally.

For her, eating disorders are a serious topic that don't deserve ridicule.

"They're very serious problems and people joke about it a lot," Maine said. "We don't take it seriously. Some people think it's just an issue of vanity. It isn't that. It's a deep message about not feeling a sense of personal power and authority and not feeling respected in then world."

Maine said her focus over the last 10 years has been on adults with eating disorders. She's started seeing more and more adult women come to her with that problem. Her 2005 book, The Body Myth, was about that subject.

"One of my passions has been to help shed some light on that problem," Maine said. "At that time, there was just about no research on adults with eating disorders. It was about younger patients."

Maine said that since her book came out, there has been more research and more written about adults with eating disorders.

"We understand that body image and eating disorders don't go away at the age of 18," Maine said. "If you live in a culture that gives women toxic messages about who they should be and is telling them constantly to be someone they are not, those messages don't expire. As women go through adult life, if they had eating disorders when they were younger, they can easily come back -- or never go away."

Maine also said eating disorders aren't a problem only found in women.

"We do see more men than we have in the past as well," Maine said. "Overall, in the field, we believe that about 10 percent of eating disorders occur in men. However, there have been a couple of pretty good research surveys that find that 25 percent of men reporting eating disorder symptoms."

Maine said she is so passionate about speaking on the subject because she wants people to be able to come forward with their problems and get help, something she does with her patients through talk therapy and by linking up with her other doctors. Alternatively, she wants people without eating disorders to view them with a serious perspective.

"There's so much shame about eating disorders for men and women," Maine said. "Eating is such a basic part of life and to admit you can't do this right, that this has overtaken your life, creates a great deal of embarrassment and shame. People don't see it as a serious illness."

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