My girlfriend and I have been dating for a few months now. I really like her and care about her. Recently, I found out she is bulimic. I know this is supposed to be bad, but she doesn’t want any help with it, and as Brian says of his brief girlfriend Jillian “It keeps her SO hot!” Am I ethically obligated to insist on getting her help even though she doesn’t want it?

While your allusion to Family Guy is amusing, the situation is not. Eating disorders get a lot of press and show in many places in our cultures — from TV sitcoms, to tabloids, to “diet trends,” to actual first-hand experiences such as yours. But the fact is that no matter who is practicing it or the context it appears in, it is still a dangerous disease.

Little is known or understood about eating disorders and few doctors are trained to treat them. The things we read and hear create most of our knowledge of them, and few are accurate or even true. Eating disorders are a mental disease that can lead to dangerously low bone density, starvation, heart failure, throat lacerations, low to no testosterone or sexual drive and even death.

However, the ethics of whether or not to get help are convoluted, and it is up to you to decide the course of action to take. Many consider personal freedom a moral right, and you may feel that forcing your girlfriend to seek help, or forcing help upon her, is going against her freedom. You could also justify inaction by saying that no one else is being directly harmed by her actions, and so why fix what is not being broken in the larger picture? Furthermore, if you feel positive about assisted suicide, then you have no reason to act.

But if none of the former applies, you should seek help immediately. And while you are at it, disregard all of them as viable reasons not to seek help. While your girlfriend may say it is her freedom to choose how to live, she is suffering from a mental disease. Would you put a gun in the hands of someone who just told you that they would shoot themselves? This is essentially the same thing — she is not wanting you to seek help, so you do not.

In the utilitarian moral world, where no one hurts anyone else, you need to think of those that she matters to other than yourself: her siblings, parents, relatives and childhood friends. If her eating disorder is advanced and she is in danger of death, they will be severally negatively impacted by her loss. In not acting, you might be directly hurting her and others, which is not morally acceptable. To Kant, even the thought of misconduct was morally wrong — and we are talking about actions here.

As for assisted suicide, that is a can of worms that I am not prepared to open today (stay tuned, though). You should keep in mind that it is you who is essentially “pulling the plug” by choosing not to act in this potentially deadly situation.

There are many services for you to seek help through on campus. Student Health and the Student Counseling Center are both located on West Lorain. Depending on the length of time that she has been suffering from her disorder, you may want to head straight to Allen Memorial Medical Center. Most important is that you do not take this on yourself; people with advanced cases of eating disorders can be incredibly manipulative and good at making excuses. You should seek help from her friends, and if you know them, her relatives. Your RA, LRA and RD are all great resources too.

The choice, as with all moral decisions, is yours. If you really do care for her health and well being, you will take action. She might not thank you for it today, but you could save her life in the long run. That is several hundred “good significant other” points.

The Ethical Obie

theethicalobie@gmail.com