Editor’s note: The last names of the subjects of this story have been omitted to protect their privacy.

Suzi spent the second half of her sophomore year in what she calls a “self-created prison,” trapping herself behind the bars of her depression and her desire to control what she ate. Her food consumption dropped drastically. Even though she said she knew it was a problem, rather than seek help, she let the early stages of her eating disorder intensify.

“I felt trapped and I couldn’t see a way out,” she said. “I couldn’t think far enough ahead to say `I need help.'”

Suzi, a GW upperclassman, is part of a growing trend among college women across the country, recent statistics show. This spring, People magazine reported that between 600,000 and 840,000 undergraduates on college campuses nationwide wake up everyday preparing themselves to battle with eating disorders.

They risk life and limb in a desperate attempt to control their weight, using a mix of starvation, and bingeing and purging cycles as their weapons. While some may win their day-to-day battles, the Montreuv Counseling Center, which specializes in eating disorders, reported that one out of every five of these undergraduates will prematurely forfeit their lives as a casualty of the war.

Between five and seven percent of America’s 12 million undergraduates suffer from diagnosed eating disorders, according to the Eating Disorder Awareness and Prevention Group, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations dedicated solely to prevention and awareness of eating disorders. For the general population, this percentage hovers between one and two percent.

The higher than average percentage of undergraduates who are afflicted with anorexia, (a disease characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss), bulimia (a disease characterized by a secretive cycle of binge eating followed by purging) or binge eating (characterized primarily by periods of uncontrolled, impulsive, or continuous eating beyond the point of feeling comfortably full) has alarmed doctors, students, and school officials, who are struggling to understand why so many college students fall prey to eating disorders.

Dr. William Pinney, coordinator of training and a staff psychologist specializing in eating disorders at the GW Counseling Center, said eating disorders are “never simply about food and weight,” though the diseases manifest themselves in that arena.

GW student Michelle, who suffered from an eating disorder in high school, said she believes people who do not have a strong sense of self are more likely to succumb to the pressures of adjusting to college life, where people are often judged based solely on appearance.

“I think a big part of avoiding the problem is being comfortable with the other aspects of your life and who you are as a person,” she said. “Things start making sense when you think about what makes you confident – is it that you can put on a pair of jeans and they fit, or that you can write really well?”

Michelle said that living with other students who have eating problems can cause college women to mimic the actions of their peers.

“You’re meeting a whole new group of people and you want to fit in, and so you adopt the norms of living,” she said. “If you go to dinner and all the girls around you are ordering salad, you have to be a strong enough person to say you want pizza, if you want pizza.”

Holly Hoff, program director for the EDAP, said when young adults enter into a new life phase, such as going away to college, they often feel out of control, leading them to control the one thing they feel they can: food consumption.

A GW freshman from Philadelphia said she struggled with an eating disorder for four years before coming to GW and compared her disease to an addiction she used to find control.

“It’s something you abuse because you feel out of place,” she said. “It’s a vice like drug use or drinking or any other thing people become addicted to. You use it to help cope with an insecure atmosphere.”

Michelle said she agreed that the problem is often an issue of control, but what many sufferers don’t realize until much later is that in their attempt to gain control, they begin to become controlled by the disease.

“If someone has a problem, it becomes the focus of her life and she can’t even think of anything else,” she said. “I used to sit next to a friend in class, and she wouldn’t be paying attention (to the teacher) – her hair would be falling out on the ground and she’d be counting her calories for the day.”

Michelle, Suzi, and the freshman from Philadelphia are among those sufferers who eventually entered recovery. All agreed that getting better was difficult, yet it was by no means impossible.

“For people to survive something like this, they only have three choices: get better, continue until you get so sick you die, or continue to fight the constant cycle your whole life, and then you never really live,” the freshman said.

“My therapist would tell me the story of a girl who said she envied her father, the alcoholic, because he can lock up the source of his addiction in a cabinet, but she would have to take hers for a walk three times a day,” she said. “When you get better, you really prove how much you love yourself.”