Anorexia sufferer commits suicide
A young woman climbed 2,500 steps to the top of the ‘Stairway to Nowhere’ in New York and jumped to her death.
Yocheved Gourarie, 24, of Brooklyn suffered from anorexia and depression since she was 12 years old. Her body was found at the bottom of the 16-story tourist attraction The Vessel on Manhattan’s west side.
SUICIDE NOTE
Before taking the subway from her home in Crown Heights into Manhattan, Yocheved wrote a suicide note to family and friends that she arranged to be posted on Instagram the day after her death.
“Anorexia continues to plague me, I hope you can find some comfort in knowing I am no longer in pain. I love you.”
Anorexia, a psychological fear of gaining weight that results in a dangerously low body weight, kills more than 2.4 million people every year in the United States.
TRAPPED IN HELL
Yocheved, who had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and neuroscience, said she “spent years hiding my truth from the world, save for a select few family members and friends, and still more years in complete silence, certain that I was doomed to live out my days trapped in hell.”
She credited the National Eating Disorders Association — nationaleatingdisorders.org — for helping her cope with the disease, and spent two months at the Center for Change in Utah, a residential treatment facility for women, calling it a wonderful experience.
But in the end, the only way to free herself from the pain was at the top of the stairway to nowhere.
Oh my … very sad and difficult to read. Young, beautiful, brilliant and felt so hopeless…
I may be wrong (you would know better than me) but I don’t think a lot of people realize how devastating this illness can be.
Yes my friend, mental illness in my humble opinion is the most hopeless of all… many of the medications actually make people so numb they refuse to take them.
Very sad.
Counseling, companionship, strong moral support are more effective than brain-damaging meds — although nothing helped in this young woman’s case. Sad indeed.
So sad , so tragic. Lady Diana too suffered from this ailment.
Yes, I’d forgotten that — another young woman gone too soon.