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Project Anorexia: Agents seek models at Swedish eating disorder clinic – Metro US

Project Anorexia: Agents seek models at Swedish eating disorder clinic

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Modeling agencies have been trying to recruit Sweden’s next top catwalk talent outside the country’s largest eating disorders clinic in Stockholm, its doctors have claimed.

“We find this absolutely reprehensible. They [talent scouts] have been standing outside our clinic and trying to pick up our girls because they know that they are skinny,” Anna-Maria af Sandeberg, chief doctor at the Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders (Stockholms Centrum för Ätstörningar), told Metro.

“It absolutely sends the wrong signals when what the girls need is treatment,” she added.

The last incident took place a year ago, when the clinic was forced to stop its arrangements concerning patients going outside on walks.

“The scouts have been courting severely ill girls aged 14 and 15,” Christina Lillman-Ringbor, care coordinator at the clinic, told Metro.

Some patients have a body mass index as low as 14. For adults, an ideal range is between 18.5 and 24.9 BMI, which is a measurement of a person’s height-to-weight ratio.

The clinic caters at any one time to 1,700 patients, with a focus on “bringing starvation and binge-eating/vomiting under control.” According to its website, the center offers outpatient, day-patient and inpatient services, as well as a mobile unit, a school and two apartments for family treatment.